Fighting The Inner Grinch
One of the unfortunate side effects of being a musician at Christmastime is that it really does tend to ruin your enjoyment of holiday music. Caroling is a lovely tradition, yes, but when you're playing Sleigh Ride or the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy for the 823rd time in your career, you do begin to feel a bit Scrooge-ish.
Still, most of us in the business have personal holiday favorites, and the payoff for being a part of so many mediocre Christmas-themed concerts is that you remember the really great ones even more vividly. So, as the first major snowstorm of the season starts to wind down outside my window, it seemed like a good time to pass along the meme that prolific blogger and orchestra consultant Drew McManus dropped into my inbox this morning. Here goes nothing...
Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the most:
1) J.S. Bach, Christmas Oratorio (So underrated.)
2) Handel's Messiah (Still the champion.)
3) Silent Night (Even better in German.)
4) Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the least:
1) Anything Nutcracker-related (any professional musician who claims to like it is lying to you)
2) Do They Know It's Christmas? (An utter musical abomination dressed up as charity.)
3) Winter Wonderland (Yeah, I know, I'm a killjoy. Sue me. "Snowman" should never be rhymed with "No, man.")
4) A Holly Jolly Christmas (Not only is it a terrible song, but Burl Ives was responsible for Pete Seeger being blacklisted during the dark days of Joe McCarthy's HUAC...)
Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the most:
1) Back when I was in college, the entire Oberlin bassoon studio would gather in the conservatory lounge during the last week of classes before Christmas to play beautiful and hilarious arrangements of various carols, all while dressed in outlandish costumes and armed with candy to throw at the audience. It was an event not to be missed.
2) All Is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914. This was a collaboration between Theater Latte Da and the wonderful male vocal ensemble Cantus which told the true World War I story that John McCutcheon sang about in Christmas in the Trenches. It could have been horribly corny and overwrought - instead, it was simple, uplifting, and very, very well done. MPR's got the audio on their web site...
3) The St. Olaf Christmas Festival. It's legendary for a reason - the St. Olaf Choir is far and away the best choral group I've ever had the good fortune to perform with, and though I've only made it down to Northfield to see the Christmas Fest in person once, it stands as the best "traditional" Christmas concert I know.
4) This particular performance of Messiah. (Hat tip to Osmo for the link...)
Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the least:
1) Pick a Nutcracker. Any Nutcracker.
2) And not to harp on the Nutcracker thing, but that hideous Swingin' Nutcracker show needs to be on this list, too. It's not that Duke Ellington's arrangements are bad - in fact, most of them are better than Tchaikovsky's versions. And that's exactly the problem. Orchestras mounting this show tend to play the two versions of each movement back-to-back, with boring old ballerinas dancing 90% of the kids in the audience to sleep during the Tchaikovsky, and then super-athletic swing dancers swooping in to dazzle them during the Ellington. Has ever a show been better contrived to convince children that orchestras are stodgy and boring?
3) Back in the late '90s, I played a Messiah pickup gig at a tiny church in Birmingham, Alabama. The orchestra outnumbered the choir, which consisted of 12 women and 2 men. None of them could sing in tune, and most of the arias had to be taken at half tempo when it was discovered that the two female soloists couldn't actually sing melismas. The Hallelujah chorus was the most pathetic, anemic-sounding thing I've ever heard.
4) Andy Williams. Yeah, I said it. Who wants a piece?
Four holiday CDs you enjoy the most:
1) John Prine - A John Prine Christmas
2) Turtle Island String Quartet - By The Fireside
3) Tom Waits - Blue Valentine Okay, technically, this isn't a Christmas album, but every Tom Waits fan knows what song I'm thinking of here. If you're not a Tom Waits fan, you probably shouldn't click the link.
4) Dar Williams - The Christians & The Pagans Again, not a full Christmas album - just a single track off the album Mortal City. But this hilarious and touching song does more to fill me with Christmas spirit than any Bing Crosby croon ever could.
Four holiday CDs you enjoy the least:
1) Mannheim Steamroller - A Fresh Aire Christmas This is my Uncle Jeff's very favorite Christmas album, which pains me, because he's one of my very favorite relations, and I have always viewed him as a wonderful role model in nearly every way. But he's absolutely 1000% wrong about the Steamroller. This is hideous electronic dreck that is guaranteed to stick in your head until April.
2) Bing Crosby - How Lovely Is Christmas Now, look. I like ol' Bing as much as the next guy (in fact, my grandfather's army buddies used to refer to him as "Little Bing" because he was always crooning some Crosby classic or other,) but this album, which I grew up listening to, is pure hogwash. The centerpiece is a crackpot story about some kid named Jethro who wants "an axe, an apple, and a buckskin jacket" for Christmas and is then visited in the night by Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Daniel Boone. The songs were impossibly catchy without actually being good, and the whole concept was beyond ridiculous. (And if you, too, owned this album as a child, my apologies for having just gotten that axe/apple/buckskin tune stuck in your head.)
3) Bob Dylan - Christmas in the Heart Admit it - you just assumed this was an elaborate joke when you heard about it a month or so ago. I certainly did, and I'm actually not quite ready to concede that it isn't. But it is a real CD, and Lord, is it awful.
4) Lynyrd Skynyrd - Christmas Time Again There is no earthly reason for this album to exist. There is no earthly reason for it to include a song called "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'." And there is really no reason for Amazon to have it in stock a decade after its release. But there it is, in all its holiday spirit-crushing glory.
Wow. This turned out to be a much longer post than I was expecting, but heck, it's not as if I have anything else to do on a day that the roads are impassable, and the temperature's falling fast towards the zero mark. Feel free to leave your own lists of holiday triumphs and abominations in the comments if you like...
Still, most of us in the business have personal holiday favorites, and the payoff for being a part of so many mediocre Christmas-themed concerts is that you remember the really great ones even more vividly. So, as the first major snowstorm of the season starts to wind down outside my window, it seemed like a good time to pass along the meme that prolific blogger and orchestra consultant Drew McManus dropped into my inbox this morning. Here goes nothing...
Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the most:
1) J.S. Bach, Christmas Oratorio (So underrated.)
2) Handel's Messiah (Still the champion.)
3) Silent Night (Even better in German.)
4) Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
Four holiday songs/pieces you enjoy the least:
1) Anything Nutcracker-related (any professional musician who claims to like it is lying to you)
2) Do They Know It's Christmas? (An utter musical abomination dressed up as charity.)
3) Winter Wonderland (Yeah, I know, I'm a killjoy. Sue me. "Snowman" should never be rhymed with "No, man.")
4) A Holly Jolly Christmas (Not only is it a terrible song, but Burl Ives was responsible for Pete Seeger being blacklisted during the dark days of Joe McCarthy's HUAC...)
Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the most:
1) Back when I was in college, the entire Oberlin bassoon studio would gather in the conservatory lounge during the last week of classes before Christmas to play beautiful and hilarious arrangements of various carols, all while dressed in outlandish costumes and armed with candy to throw at the audience. It was an event not to be missed.
2) All Is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914. This was a collaboration between Theater Latte Da and the wonderful male vocal ensemble Cantus which told the true World War I story that John McCutcheon sang about in Christmas in the Trenches. It could have been horribly corny and overwrought - instead, it was simple, uplifting, and very, very well done. MPR's got the audio on their web site...3) The St. Olaf Christmas Festival. It's legendary for a reason - the St. Olaf Choir is far and away the best choral group I've ever had the good fortune to perform with, and though I've only made it down to Northfield to see the Christmas Fest in person once, it stands as the best "traditional" Christmas concert I know.
4) This particular performance of Messiah. (Hat tip to Osmo for the link...)
Four holiday concerts (live) you enjoyed the least:
1) Pick a Nutcracker. Any Nutcracker.
2) And not to harp on the Nutcracker thing, but that hideous Swingin' Nutcracker show needs to be on this list, too. It's not that Duke Ellington's arrangements are bad - in fact, most of them are better than Tchaikovsky's versions. And that's exactly the problem. Orchestras mounting this show tend to play the two versions of each movement back-to-back, with boring old ballerinas dancing 90% of the kids in the audience to sleep during the Tchaikovsky, and then super-athletic swing dancers swooping in to dazzle them during the Ellington. Has ever a show been better contrived to convince children that orchestras are stodgy and boring?
3) Back in the late '90s, I played a Messiah pickup gig at a tiny church in Birmingham, Alabama. The orchestra outnumbered the choir, which consisted of 12 women and 2 men. None of them could sing in tune, and most of the arias had to be taken at half tempo when it was discovered that the two female soloists couldn't actually sing melismas. The Hallelujah chorus was the most pathetic, anemic-sounding thing I've ever heard.
4) Andy Williams. Yeah, I said it. Who wants a piece?
Four holiday CDs you enjoy the most:
1) John Prine - A John Prine Christmas
2) Turtle Island String Quartet - By The Fireside
3) Tom Waits - Blue Valentine Okay, technically, this isn't a Christmas album, but every Tom Waits fan knows what song I'm thinking of here. If you're not a Tom Waits fan, you probably shouldn't click the link.
4) Dar Williams - The Christians & The Pagans Again, not a full Christmas album - just a single track off the album Mortal City. But this hilarious and touching song does more to fill me with Christmas spirit than any Bing Crosby croon ever could.
Four holiday CDs you enjoy the least:
1) Mannheim Steamroller - A Fresh Aire Christmas This is my Uncle Jeff's very favorite Christmas album, which pains me, because he's one of my very favorite relations, and I have always viewed him as a wonderful role model in nearly every way. But he's absolutely 1000% wrong about the Steamroller. This is hideous electronic dreck that is guaranteed to stick in your head until April.
2) Bing Crosby - How Lovely Is Christmas Now, look. I like ol' Bing as much as the next guy (in fact, my grandfather's army buddies used to refer to him as "Little Bing" because he was always crooning some Crosby classic or other,) but this album, which I grew up listening to, is pure hogwash. The centerpiece is a crackpot story about some kid named Jethro who wants "an axe, an apple, and a buckskin jacket" for Christmas and is then visited in the night by Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Daniel Boone. The songs were impossibly catchy without actually being good, and the whole concept was beyond ridiculous. (And if you, too, owned this album as a child, my apologies for having just gotten that axe/apple/buckskin tune stuck in your head.)
3) Bob Dylan - Christmas in the Heart Admit it - you just assumed this was an elaborate joke when you heard about it a month or so ago. I certainly did, and I'm actually not quite ready to concede that it isn't. But it is a real CD, and Lord, is it awful.
4) Lynyrd Skynyrd - Christmas Time Again There is no earthly reason for this album to exist. There is no earthly reason for it to include a song called "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin'." And there is really no reason for Amazon to have it in stock a decade after its release. But there it is, in all its holiday spirit-crushing glory.
Wow. This turned out to be a much longer post than I was expecting, but heck, it's not as if I have anything else to do on a day that the roads are impassable, and the temperature's falling fast towards the zero mark. Feel free to leave your own lists of holiday triumphs and abominations in the comments if you like...
Labels: fun, holiday music
posted by Sam at
11:17 AM
6 Comments:
Hey, I like Andy Williams! Am I in trouble now?
Also, if you have so much xtra time on your hands, there is plenty of snow to be shoveled at my house!
If you don't like The Nutcracker, then don't watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf6tuisazQA
(I happen to love this arrangement and this ensemble, who were in town last month.)
There are many things that make me glad to be an Australian, and one of them is that I've not been soured by Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. The ballet companies here do not stage it as an annual Christmas staple: it turns up in the repertoire no more frequently than any other major story ballet, and it's not necessarily staged as a Christmas piece (this year the Australian Ballet staged it in May, a lovely fresh reinterpretation by Graeme Murphy which solves the problem of the original's weak libretto). Similarly the orchestras don't trot it out by default as Christmas music: suites are played no more and no less frequently than the other great(er) Tchaikovsky ballets. And so my love for this gorgeous and really delightful music is fervent and unspoilt. Phew!
;-)
I agree with most of what you're saying. I would point out that in Russia, as in Australia, Nutcracker isn't a Christmas chestnut. The Bolshoi did it intermittently, but in repertoire with all their other works. One of my great regrets from my time in Moscow was missing the Russian National Orchestra playing Nutcracker one New Years Eve. I suspect much of the problem with Nutcracker in the U.S. is undermanned, underrehearsed pit orchestras slogging through it. Put it in the hands of a great, well-rehearsed Russian orchestra and I suspect it would come across a lot better.
Completely agree about Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Would be nice to hear Berlioz' "L'Enfance du Christ" in the Christmas rotation, too.
If you want great Christmas music, though, not to be missed is the European Broadcasting Union's annual "Joy to the World" program, usually broadcast the Sunday before Christmas, with about a dozen one-hour concerts from around Europe (and usually Canada and the U.S.). Lots of interesting stuff there most years.
It's interesting what pieces of music different countries/cultures consider traditional holiday fare. Nutcracker is sort of an obvious choice, since the action takes place at Christmastime, but the Messiah, by all rights, should be an Easter tradition.
In Japan, it's traditional for orchestras to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony at Christmas, a tradition our former music director Eiji Oue brought with him to Minnesota.
Who let the dogs in?
How does this happen in a concert hall - and where?
A wonderful clip. Thank you.
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