The “Un-Halloween” option you need!
My family doesn’t celebrate Halloween, but we always used to let our kids dress up in costumes and go to church “Fall Festivals” where they bobbed for apples, fished for prizes, and had their faces painted. We’re not anti-costume or anti-fun, just anti-Halloween. I bring this up because many of us teach students whose families also do not celebrate Halloween. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy a good mystery, or like to squeal when they play hide-and-seek, or enjoy hanging out by a fire pit in the backyard at night watching bats flying around overhead. When I wrote “Terrifying Trilogy,” it was because I thought there was a need for some mysterious and eery student pieces that were not based on Halloween, but on mood.
About “Terrifying Trilogy”:
I am a fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies. My husband and I have probably watched most of them, except for that one with the shower and the knife (eek!). When our boys were teenagers, we bought them posters for their rooms that featured Cary Grant running through a corn field away from a crop duster (“North by Northwest”), and of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant driving a sports car near the French Riviera (“To Catch a Thief”). I have every scene of “Rear Window” more or less memorized, and we once owned the complete works of Alfred Hitchcock on VHS tape. So, we are sort of Hitchcock nerds.
“Terrifying Trilogy” is a set of three C-minor pieces that can stand alone or work together like a sonatina with fast-slow-fast movements. Each piece has a one-word Hitchcock-inspired title to set the tone. They are written in three different meters: 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8.
I performed demonstrations of these pieces in a dark room at night by candlelight as though the power had gone out in our neighborhood. Be sure to watch those videos and perhaps show your students! Also, I am not recommending that small children watch Hitchcock movies or that they should make the connection between these titles and Alfred Hitchcock. If you have teenage students at this level, they may be familiar with some of the more popular Hitchcock movies, but the primary focus here is mood. Teaching students to play music that evokes a mysterious or eery mood is both fun and valuable for overall musicianship and appropriate performance of different styles.
Part One: “Apprehension”
“Apprehension” features a foreboding left-hand melody consisting of whole notes and half notes, while the right hand gives nervous and trembling support with an accompaniment of repeated eighth note thirds. There’s a tiny bit of syncopation in the middle section when the right hand takes the melody, but nothing too daunting for late elementary or early intermediate students.
Part Two: “Suspicion”
“Suspicion” is the slow movement of the set. Imagine Cary Grant (it’s always Cary Grant in my examples!) bringing his suspicious wife, Joan Fontaine, that glowing glass of milk to calm her nerves in Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” (1941). This time, the right hand gets the eery melody with a long line of dotted half notes while the left hand accompanies with creepy broken triads.
Part Three: “Trepidation”
“Trepidation” is the big finale. If your students enjoy “Pirates of the Caribbean” (not a Hitchcock movie, haha), then they will probably love playing “Trepidation.” Repeated eighth-note patterns in the right hand give this piece a difficult sound while remaining very playable. Challenge your pianists to work up to a fast tempo while keeping the triplet figures in the right hand nice and even. When you get to the middle section, you may think you are on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at a Disney park.
Final thoughts…
My experience has been that students naturally love the first and third pieces. Those are the flashy and fun ones that make it easy to impress their audiences. It is a mature student who can appreciate the slower-paced second piece in the set and not rush through it. I always point that out to my students to spark some interest! One student of mine who learned the entire set told me that “Suspicion” was her favorite. When I looked surprised, she said, “It’s because it’s the most mysterious.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about my motivation for composing “Terrifying Trilogy” and will enjoy sharing these pieces with your developing pianists! And if you are a Hitchcock fan, comment below with your favorite Hitchcock movie!
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