That Shining Music

Halloween is one of those crazy pseudo-holidays where young people like to have parties featuring live bands.

In the fleeting days of my young adulthood, I myself was a rock bassist for several bands (meaning that since Halloween only happens once a year, I often found myself overbooked...it was not uncommon to play 4 shows in a single weekend).

Recently, a young garage-band in my neighborhood discovered composer Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (the 3rd Movement of which was made famous by Stanley Kubrick in the 1980 horror classic "The Shining").

I know that the piece is great as forboding horror music, but when I realized that almost nobody in the U.S. even knew Bartok's name, I was suddenly compelled to write a brief homage to this often overlooked musical genius that at least identified him as 'the guy who wrote the music for "The Shining"', because had it not been for Hitler's mad quest to make Hungary a vassal outpost of the Third Reich, Bartok might have been remembered more widely as one of the great Hungarian composers of the 20th Century.

Obviously, I only know what other people have written about the man, but at the very minimum, his story is one of the more compelling bits of modern history worth knowing.

NOTE: The TITLE theme to The Shining is the original work of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind. This fairly brief keyboard piece was only a segment of the piece the band I mentioned was trying to learn. I in no way meant to discredit Carlos and Elkind...I only meant to elevate Bartok's contribution to The Shining (which IS the music that permeates the majority of the film). And while I'm giving credit where credit is due, The Shining is IMHO author Stephen King's scariest book. Kubrick's film adaptation is great, but there's really no comparison between a novel and a film.