The old cemeteries of Edinburgh, Scotland, such as this one at St Cuthbert's, inspired the period group Artek's program "Graveyard Music."

In medieval times, the specter of death haunted every level of European society. Death from disease and war could come at any time, and even healthy lives tended to be short. "Memento mori (Remember You Will Die)" was a common phrase, while painters depicted imaginations of hell, and carnivals included effigies of the Grim Reaper.

		Artek Presented by: Renaissance & Baroque Society. Where: Synod Hall, Oakland. When: 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $10-$30. 412-361-2048.

Today, death seems to almost have taken a backseat to aging, with all the creams and injections, pills and diets to look and perform better as we age. We live longer, and therefore death seems distant.

"I think that is really the difference from [today]," says Gwendolyn Toth, artistic director of the creative early music group Artek. "Nowadays we don't expect people to die until they are old. Back then the idea was that you could die at any time, because people did."

Saturday, Artek will reacquaint audiences with the good ole fear of dying with "Graveyard Music" for the group's debut in the Pittsburgh Renaissance & Baroque Society series. It's as Goth as period music gets -- just in time for Halloween.

The program includes songs on death by Monteverdi, Dowland, Carissimi, Purcell and others, with lute, harp, theorbo, guitar, da gamba and harpsichord accompaniment.

"It will be a spooky atmosphere and gorgeous music," says Toth. "We will bring the graveyard into [the hall] by projecting images on a screen behind the stage."

The group got the idea for the concert while performing another show in Edinburgh in 2005. "Edinburgh is famous for its graveyards because people robbed bodies from them," says Toth.

"In the 19th century, because Edinburgh was sort of the hotbed of medical training, they were digging up the bodies to dissect them to find more out about medicine. The problem was that [it] was so lucrative that some people made it into the grave a little faster than they would have otherwise. The church we were staying at was St. Cuthbert's, which has a fabulous-looking graveyard. So we thought why not take that as a theme and do concerts that relate somehow to death and graveyards and funerals and sadness."

Although the performers will don a little dark makeup and turn the lights down, it's the music that makes the show haunting, says Toth. "We came up with this wonderful piece, from the Renaissance Florentine Carnival called the 'Carro della Morte,' which is the 'Cart of Death.' This was a special cart that in the plague times would haul people away who had died of the plague. In the Carnival, they would use the cart to hold these allegorical figures of death in the parade."

Other works include gloomy standards such as Dowland's "Flow My Tears" and Purcell's "The Fatal Hour," but also some more upbeat songs such as "The Dance of Life and Death."

"Not every song we are doing is sad," says Toth. "We are doing a very funny [song] about a lady who dies and a big piece about Mary Queen of Scots that ends up with her being beheaded. During 'The Dance of Life and Death,' in between the verses we play little improvisations on tunes [that] hopefully the audience will recognize, like the Pachelbel Canon or the 'Mexican Hat Dance.' "

If ghouls and skeletons hark to the music and start a danse macabre at this concert, these musicians might just join in.