Swan Lake Horror

This article examines the practice of using the famous oboe theme Scéne, Moderato from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in horror films. A long-forgotten arrangement of it, found in the New York Public Library, helps to trace the origins of this practice in silent film and to document the beginning of the association between the Swan theme and vampires, specifically. The relationship between the two has proven to be a strong one and, crossing over from silent to sound film, has continued for almost a hundred years, from the iconic Dracula (1931) to the recent Abigail (2024). Analysis of the musical features of the Moderato and the individual narrative elements of Tchaikovsky’s ballet shows that its use in horror films is not as strange as it might first seem and sound, but rather has an intrinsic rationale. If it was an accidental discovery of the filmmakers, it has nonetheless proven successful. Even though Tchaikovsky did not directly refer to the topos of horror in this movement, the generalized and indirect features appeared to be sufficient to combine it with the images of vampires on the screen to form an audiovisual metaphor of horror. For those audio-viewers who know this music first through ballet or, conversely, who have drawn their initial experiences from film, the curious fusion of the Swan theme and eerie cinematic scenes almost inevitably entails intertextual and intergenre crossovers. Ultimately, the case study of Swan Lake in horror film enriches our notions of this music as such and its expressive potential on the screen.