AFTER yesterday’s modern festive tunes, today we go a bit further back in time.
We start with J S Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, which is performed every year in Leipzig’s St Nicholas Church, where the composer was musical director. When we featured this clip for the first time in 2018, TCW’s Janice Davis wrote: ‘The church rose to national fame in 1989 with the spontaneous Monday Demonstrations, when it became the centre of peaceful revolt against communist rule and led ultimately to the fall of the Berlin Wall. What better place to rejoice and be exceeding glad!’
As a child I was taken to see Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker several times and I have had the pleasure of taking my own children to it. This is one of my favourite scenes; the Boston Ballet have taken a bit of a liberty with slow motion which to my mind does no harm at all.
I should think if people were asked what classical music they associate with Christmas, a substantial majority would say Handel’s Messiah. I love this joyful performance of For Unto Us a Son is Born by the Gramophone Chorus of Ghana.
The Shepherds’ Farewell was written by Berlioz in 1850 and eventually formed the foundation of his oratorio L’Enfance du Christ, first performed in Paris on December 10, 1854. Unusually, the composer wrote the words as well, and you can read the lovely verse here.
I would bet good money that if you heard this piece without being able to see the composer’s name, you would not guess it in a month of Sundays. It is Arnold Schoenberg, the exponent of atonal music. He composed this fantasia Weihnachtsmusik (‘Christmas Music’) in 1921.
For a change of pace, here is Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. Apparently he got the idea for it in a heatwave in July 1946, and it was first performed in 1948. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s there was a lot of so-called ‘light orchestral’ music on the radio by composers such as Eric Coates and Ronald Binge, melodic and usually cheerful, but you never seem to hear it now. I enjoyed this version by the US Navy Band.
This motet, Hodie Christus Natus Est, is by the Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621), who was organist at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk for 44 years.
Finally, one of my favourite pieces of music, Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar. As I wrote here (where you can see its history), I first encountered it when it was sung by the senior choir at my girls’ grammar school in about 1960, and I thought it was the most unbelievably beautiful thing I had ever heard. I still do.
It is given every few years by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and this is the 2016 version. I don’t know the young soloist’s name but what a wonderful voice.
I hope all our readers have a very happy day.
