That famous eerie melody — ‘Dies Irae’

There’s a four-note melody heard in many of our favorite movies, called the “Dies Irae” (pronounced Dee-ay-zeer-ee). It can be heard in movies like Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977), The Shining (1980) and even Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).

However, the melody has been around for hundreds of years before premiering on the big screen. “Dies Irae” is originally a Latin poem, translating to “Day of Wrath.” There is some debate over its origin, but it is frequently attributed to Italian friar, poet and author Thomas of Celano (1200-1265). First heard as a 13th century Gregorian chant, “Dies Irae” was used by Catholic monks during funerals. Since then, the chant’s melody has been adapted to evoke feelings of death and despair.

Louis Hector Berlioz of France took the chant out of churches and into his symphony, “Symphonie Fantastique” in 1830. The “Dies Irae” helped Berlioz tell the story of an artist’s self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman. Berlioz knew that the public would recognize its association with death and the “Day of Wrath.”

Berlioz wasn’t the only composer to include the eerie melody in his work. Many other well-known classical composers used the “Dies Irae,” including English composer Gustav Holst in his early 20th century compositional suite “The Planets” during the movement “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” and French composer Camille Saint-Saens’ 1874 symphonic poem “Danse Macabre.”

Shortly after, the “Dies Irae” was heard in plays and live orchestras for silent movies, then eventually into larger movie productions as cinema evolved.

But what exactly makes this four-note melody so unsettling?

First of all, the chant is in a minor mode. In simple terms, a minor mode is like a musical setting that is able to provide the listener with a certain feeling. Any music in the minor mode tends to be more dissonant and tense-sounding to our ears compared to the constant sounding major mode. This uncomfortable feeling is created by adjusting some of the notes within the scale, which is a set of musical notes ordered by frequency and pitch. Doing this causes dissonance, or a lack of harmony, for the listener.

In the “Dies Irae,” the notes are only a half step apart. In Western society, our ears have been trained to dislike the sound of musical notes so close together, though what we perceive as audibly uncomfortable varies depending on our culture and society. Additionally, the four notes are descending, rather than ascending. The combination of these three things have created a somber and ominous feel for its listeners.

Some of the most notable places to listen to the “Dies Irae” include Danny Elfman’s “Making Christmas,” featured in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and during the intro of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.