Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” is instantly recognizable to millions, even those who aren’t big classic rock listeners. But as songwriter, music producer, and guitarist JB Eckl points out, one part of the epic song is even more familiar than people realize, and in a beautifully morbid way.

In an episode of “Sacred Riffs,” Eckl (aka the Bob Ross of rock) shared that he and his wife were watching Frozen 2 when he noticed something peculiar. The four-note siren call Elsa hears in the film sounded an awful lot like the four-note slide in the guitar solo of “Stairway to Heaven.”

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The ubiquity of Dies Irae in music and film

Eckl’s Internet rabbit hole dive revealed that the four-note sequence is actually part of a 13th-century Gregorian chant called the Dies Irae (Latin for “Day of Wrath”). For 800 years, this specific collection of notes has been used for a specific purpose.

“Composed around 1270, Dies Irae has........

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