I mentioned this song a couple of weeks back in the post about best/worst holiday music. I've never been much for carols, on the whole, but this Dar Williams song is Christmas to me, encapsulating all the familial gulfs and grudges that we manage to overcome every year, even if only for a day or two.
My favorite line: "But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share / And you find magic in your God, and we find magic Everywhere."
OK, Sam, that Hallelujah video was nothing short of brilliant. Here's something way short of brilliant, which I find mysterious on several levels. First of all, why does it start in major? And what's up with the shadowy Milla-Jovovich-in-"The Fifth Element" phantom overlaid for the whole video? And most of all, why??
Everybody loves a good Hallelujah Chorus, especially at this time of year. And if there's anything more uplifting than listening to the most famous movement of Handel's Messiah, it's singing it yourself! But what if you're a devout monk (I know, I know, but stay with me) who's taken a lifelong vow of silence? Must you deprive yourself of this most simple and pure of Christmas traditions?
...Not anymore!
That is just purely brilliant. A big hat tip to my friend Susie Telsey (she's the spangly bassoonist in last week's Christmas music post, btw) for sending this my way...
Yes, it's hard to maintain the holiday spirit while doing the umpteenth performance of some Christmas chestnut. But sometimes, the unexpected pops up, and we're reminded of how much of what we do, presenting live music, is such an astonishing and unpredictable venture.
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 HeartAdmit 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 AgainThere 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...
Well, it's actually the Year of the Ox (if you're into the whole Chinese/Japanese astrology/zodiac thing), but Cow is so much funnier...
Of course, no mention of the New Year would be complete without a Neujahrs-Konzert with the Vienna Philharmonic, a tradition since 1939, this year led by the inimitable Daniel Barenboim.
I've written about Mr. Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra - although ostensibly non-political, the ensemble has given him a platform to promote deeper understanding between two opposing factions, and given the current violence in the region, I was wondering if Barenboim would take advantage of the Vienna podium to share his thoughts.
Which he certainly did - while his remarks at the actual concert were limited to a simple wish that 2009 be a "year of peace in the world and of human justice in the Middle East", he did release a statement that was tantamount to a criticism of Israeli air strikes against Palestinians on the Gaza Strip.
While one may not agree with his politics, it's hard not to admire a man who takes a stand on his strongly-held convictions, particularly when those convictions are borne of an understanding of both perspectives (the Israeli-Argentinian conductor is also an honorary Palestinian citizen).
But, as always, the music transcends all. I particularly love "Spharenklange" by the Waltz King's brother, Josef Strauss:
I'm not a huge fan of the sweeping shots of the Alps (and the odd close-ups of alpine lichen), but, hey, it's TV, people! The notion of "Harmony of the Spheres" is a nice one, particularly given the tenor of violence in the world discussed earlier.
And of course, you can't have a New Year's Concert without the obligatory encores - in this case, ALWAYS "Blue Danube" and my favorite, Radetzky March, the perennial opportunity for conductors to ham it up and mug for the audience/camera (not that there's anything wrong with that!!):
Wishing a healthy, happy and unturbulent New Year to all!!
I don't know what it is about musicians that causes us to prize twisted, awful versions of melodies that everyone else treasures, but we do. Most likely, it has something to do with the ungodly number of times that we play such melodies, especially at Christmastime, and the secret desire we all harbor to be part of such a meltdown. Sarah's Messiah organist on crack is probably the most circulated of such holiday calamities, but having endured more painful singalong gigs than I care to remember, I like the simple sweet sadness of a classic (but difficult to sing) Christmas carol being massacred by an 8-year-old, foul-mouthed cartoon character...
(Don't worry - there's no need for a NSFW tag here. Cartman keeps his language civil in this one, even if he does seem to believe that O Holy Night includes the line, "Jesus was born, and so I get presents...")
Merry Christmas, all. I'll be out of town spending the holiday with family this week, so posting may be sparse. We'll get things back up and running before the New Year...
I know, I know, I've posted this before, but it's just too good! And it's one of those things that never fails to make me laugh (there are a couple of those in my life).
Here it is; the most appalling ending of the Hallelujah chorus that has ever been (and hopefully ever will be). I challenge you to listen to this with a straight face!
The Orchestra has just finished up a week of outdoor concerts all over the place, from Hudson, WI to Winona and Plymouth MN, playing the usual July 4th fare - Sousa marches, classics "lite" (think "Toreadors" from Carmen), John Williams movie scores and, of course, the "1812 Overture".
I've always found the ubiquity of this tsarist barn-burner at July 4th festivities kind of humorous; as a piece about Napoleon's defeat by the Russians, quoting both "La Marseillaise" and "God Save the Tsar", it seems an odd choice for concerts celebrating American independence! So how did this particular piece become the expected concert closer to every Independence Day bash?
We have Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops to thank. In 1974 Fiedler positioned the "1812" as the grand finale to a July 4th concert at the Esplanade, complete with real cannon fire, bells pealing from church steeples and a coordinate fireworks display at the end. It was a ploy to increase attendance at the Pop's summer concerts, and it made the desired impression. Never mind that crowds were whooping it up for a piece by a prominent Russian composer in the middle of the Cold War...Fiedler was certainly a savvy showman, and this genius bit of marketing captured the public's imagination (the concert was broadcast nationwide).
Of course, then, other orchestras followed suit, and "1812" has become the "patriotic" staple it is today. I don't think it's coincidental that this is perhaps the only piece in orchestral repertoire that calls for cannon fire (can anyone think of another?). It certainly expands the sonic landscape, and on most night this week I could hear the cheers and whistles from the crowd when the first "boom" occurred - audiences seem to love the noise. Those onstage, not so much - I saw a few dozen pairs of earplugs being inserted by strings and winds at an appropriate moment pre-cannon.
Outdoor concerts are tough in their own way, particularly because you are dealing with far less-than-ideal acoustics. Compounding the problems of players not being able to hear each other is the fact that we are amplified; players then have the problem of hearing their amplified performance a split second after they have heard the live version, wreaking havoc on ensemble. It usually takes a piece or two to adjust to the bounce-back of sound; I try to be extra-clear at outdoor shows, because often players can't trust what they hear and actually need to "trust the stick".
Flying insects don't help - by the encore of "Stars and Stripes" last night, I was doing more of a mosquito-shooing dance than conducting. And I'm still nursing gnat bites from Winona.
All that being said, it's gratifying to play to largely enthusiastic audiences, and to take the Orchestra to communities who might not otherwise be able to hear us. At Hudson, by the end of the concert, there were several dozen children right in front of the stage, dancing and twirling and jumping to the music, which was really sweet (although I was worried about one ebullient twirler who seemed poised to go careening into our cello section!). And for myself, I treasure these concerts because it's another opportunity to chat with audiences from the stage, to bring down the "fourth wall" and engage them with the music in a more personal way. I could think of few better ways to spend a 4th of July...although next time, I'll use more bug spray!
We tend to think of Christmas as the big "musical" holiday - what with the Nutcrackers, Messiahs, caroling and holiday concerts and all - but New Years has its own musical delights.
As I nurse my champagne hangover this afternoon, I'm enjoying a Great Performances broadcast of the 2006 Metropolitan Opera "Live in HD" version of Mozart's "Magic Flute". It's a Julie Taymor production (she of the Broadway "Lion King" fame), and it's visually quite stunning (I laughed out loud to the floating food scene - you've gotta see it), and of course the music is wonderful. Immediately following is the New Year's Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic (complete, in its broadcast form, with ballroom dancers and prancing Lipizzaners). This year, Georges Pretre becomes the first Frenchman to conduct this annual concert in its nearly 70-year history.
But my favorite turn-of-year musical extravaganza is the inimitable "Red and White Song Festival" (Kohaku Uta Gassen), the annual Japanese music show of the NHK broadcasting company. Essentially, there are two teams: "Red" (women) and "White" (men), all popular singers of all genres, from teeny pop to old fashioned enka. There are judges, an audience vote, and a team is named winner a few minutes before midnight. It's been a Japanese tradition since 1951 - it's exquisitely over-the-top, full of jaw-dropping costumes and performances. In fact, a performance by DJ Ozma last year included costumes so...realistic, shall we say...that NHK was barraged by outraged viewers for days on end (really, watch that video to the end!). It's all in good fun, and a big part of my early childhood - I spent most of my winter breaks in Tokyo with the Japanese side of the family, and watching Kohaku was a great tradition.
Wishing all of you a healthy, happy, music-filled New Year!
I grew up in the Quaker church (not nearly as exotic in my home state of Pennsylvania as it is in the Midwest,) so the kind of extravagant Christmas celebrations that so many religious traditions observe were foreign to me. My religion emphasized simplicity over ceremony, to the extent that normal Sunday services were conducted in silence, the whole congregation gathered together on hard wooden benches in a building that resembled a renovated barn, with no officiant or minister leading us. The closest thing we had to a religious authority figure (other than God, who, our tradition held, was to be found not in the sky above, but on the Earth, within each of us,) was the elected clerk of the meeting, who would indicate that the service had concluded by shaking hands with the person next to him/her, at which point we would all do the same, and then go have coffee.
My first Christmas at Gwynedd Meeting came when I was eleven, shortly after we'd moved to the area and begun attending services. I'd attended Catholic Christmas masses before, with members of my extended family who observed that tradition, and being a child with little exposure to such things, found them to be hugely intimidating, if gloriously extravagant. But I had no idea what to expect of a Quaker Christmas service. In my world, Christmas was about two things - presents and music, in that order. My brothers and I all played string instruments, so we were in heavy demand around the holiday season for cheesy little mini-performances in front of relatives, friends, and even real audiences. Moreover, we had a stately old Baldwin upright in the living room, and my mother, an accomplished amateur musician herself, was only too happy to spend an hour or two teaching us carol after carol from the worn green Christmas songbook that resided in the piano bench.
But in a church known for silence, how could Christmas be Christmas? I remember being seriously worried about this. Our services were never exactly austere and forbidding, but they were certainly solemn, and to a kid, solemnity just doesn't go with Christmas. So I was surprised when one of the elders of the meeting approached my parents to ask whether my brother, Drew, and I would be available to participate in a musical portion of the Sunday service on the weekend before Christmas that year. It would be a simple matter of performing a few understated carols in between hymns and testimonies, and we were both agreeable. We had a stockpile of such arrangements at home, and knew it wouldn't take more than an hour or two to whip them into acceptable shape.
I don't know who selected the repertoire, but I do remember thinking that some of it seemed to have little to do with Christmas. The operative theme seemed to be quiet murmuring music, rather than anything particularly festive. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring was an obvious choice, as was a movement of the Corelli Christmas Concerto that we'd been playing together for years. But somehow, Simple Gifts (a hugely important hymn in the Quaker church, albeit one without a single connection to Christ or the holidays) got into the mix, and then came the selection that made my brother's face fall the minute he heard it - Pachelbel's Canon in D.
See, my brother was a cellist, and I know from experience that the very mention of Pachelbel's name inspires that same grimacing reaction from all cellists, regardless of age or ability. The ubiquitous canon is actually a lovely (if severely overused) piece of music, and the instruments playing the melody line really have little to complain about. But for whichever instrument plays the bass line, Pachelbel is ten minutes of quiet hell. A canon is really nothing but endless variations on the same set of chords (that's why the various lines can enter one after the other and not sound dissonant,) which means that, while the melody might be changing and evolving, the chord structure stays absolutely static. Since chords are built from their lowest note, the upshot of all this is that the cellist plays a sequence of eight notes a total of 54 times in Pachelbel's Canon.
I don't know how many times my brother had to bang out the Pachelbel bass line over the years, but I do know that he was never happy about it. That Sunday at Gwynedd, I distinctly remember the change in his face when we transitioned from Corelli to Pachelbel. He went from a studious young performer hoping not to screw up, to an automaton in a trancelike state, calmly repeating his two bar bass line like a machine, his mind somewhere far, far away as he waited for me to finish noodling around on the melody line. In the years since, I've seen this look from countless other cellists at weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies of all kinds, at which the celebrants never seem able to resist the siren song of Pachelbel.
Afterwards, I must have made some vaguely mocking comment about his demeanor during the canon, because I distinctly remember him turning to me, eyes flashing with anger, and hissing, "It doesn't even have anything to do with Christmas!"
He was absolutely right, of course, and yet, I'll bet the Canon in D is being played even as I type this on Christmas-themed radio stations across the country. So Drew, this one's for you: may you never again have to play those eight cursed notes...
Having been excused from Friday night's holiday pops show because (get this) there wasn't enough room on the stage for five stands of violas, I took advantage of the evening off to go to a movie I've been waiting to see for some time: Charlie Wilson's War, based on the true story of a hard-drinking Texas congressman who more or less single-handedly dragged the US into intervening in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. (I know, I choose such delightful holiday fare, don't I?)
What makes the story remarkable is not just that Wilson was a little-known, skirt-chasing alcoholic of the highest order; and not even that he was concocting this scheme while facing possible indictment in a sex-'n-drugs scandal stemming from an ill-advised weekend in Las Vegas; but that he managed to engineer a half-billion dollars of covert government funding for an insurgent Afghan resistance without anyone in the press or public taking the slightest notice until years later.
So there I was, happily enjoying the diversion, thinking nothing of my day job, when the movie reached its climactic scene, in which the Afghani fighters finally have the anti-helicopter and anti-tank weaponry they need to fight back against the Russians, and they use it to great effect, and there is much rejoicing... and while all this is going on, what do I hear playing on the soundtrack? Handel's Messiah. I kid you not. To be more specific, it was the choral movement which comes roughly halfway through the First Part of the piece, titled "And He Shall Purify."
Only it wasn't, really. It was what I can only describe as the extended dance remix of "And He Shall Purify," with the lilting choral lines dancing over a decidedly electronic bass drum and other assorted accoutrements. It was an odd choice, and after listening to it for three or four minutes, which is how long the scene lasts, I came to the conclusion that someone involved with the film (my money's on Aaron Sorkin) must have really wanted to use that particular movement of the Messiah, and someone else must have been insistent in pointing out that baroque music was really not going to carry so well over the sounds of automatic weapons and shoulder-fired Stinger missiles. Thus is compromise born in Hollywood, or so I like to believe.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the way Hollywood always loves to break out the classical chestnuts when they're making a war movie. And not for the little character development scenes, either. You're not going to hear Beethoven's Ninth while a couple of grunts pass a doobie around in a foxhole and try to forget where they are and what they're doing. No, when the full orchestra kicks in in a picture about human combat, you know you've reached a scene that will either be glorious or staggeringly awful. Oliver Stone is famous for this, of course, and Wagner would never be the same after Francis Ford Coppola got done with him. In The Sum of All Fears (which, while not strictly a war movie, is a movie about acts of war and their consequences,) the movie's denouement features a full rendition of Nessun Dorma, as all the bad guys are summarily and secretly executed by various secret agents around the world. There's even a whole CD available of classical music that's been used to bolster war movies.
Now, Charlie Wilson's War isn't really a war movie, I suppose. Whereas war movies are epic adventures, concerned with big ideas and the men and women called upon to lay their lives on the line for them, this is a film about politics and personalities, about backroom deals brokered in the service of what everyone involved hopes might turn out to be a greater good. Other than a couple of token scenes meant to remind us of just how brutal the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was (thereby justifying Wilson's somewhat shady dealings,) there isn't much in the way of a battlefield to be seen.
Still, there it was: Handel and the mujahideen, together at last. I suspect I'm never going to hear that movement quite the same way again...
Sorry for the light blogging this week. In addition to the usual rehearsal schedule, I'm actually moving across town this week, so today will likely be the last you hear from me in this space until the weekend.
I actually haven't seen much of most of my colleagues in the orchestra this week, either (Sarah included,) because this is the week that we split the orchestra for holiday programming purposes: 20 string players and a smattering of winds play Handel's Messiah off site (specifically, at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, and the St. Paul Cathedral,) while the rest of the group plays an assortment of family concerts and holiday pops shows at Orchestra Hall. A few hardy souls volunteer to play in both groups to pick up some extra present-shopping cash, which always seems like a great idea until you get to the day when you finish a double rehearsal at the hall at 7:05pm, and have 25 minutes to sprint the eight blocks to the Basilica and throw on a tux for the Messiah concert. The year I doubled up, I don't think I caught my breath until intermission.
Whenever I can, I try to get myself assigned to the Messiah split, because it's one of the few great big holiday blockbusters that I love every bit as much as the audiences who pack the concerts every December. I've got nothing against the Nutcracker, really, and Silent Night is lovely, but they do wear on you after the 127th time you play them.
The Messiah is different. I've loved it since I was a kid, and every time I play it, there are a couple of moments that bring tears to my eyes. I couldn't be less religious, but that's what makes Handel's oratorio so remarkable. Despite the use of sacred texts (mainly Old Testament stuff about the coming of the Messiah) to form the backbone of the libretto, he hasn't written a mass meant to be slogged through at a Sunday morning church service; he's taken the biography of the central figure in Christianity and set it to music of such passion and personal feeling that you can't help but be moved. It's really less of a sacred work than it is a secular work on sacred themes - more Chronicles Of Narnia than the Book of John.
The soloists sing as if they were personal friends of Jesus, and are reacting to events as they occur, rather than reciting some dry bit of religious history. The first words you hear are not some declaration of God's power or our unworthiness as people, but a calming, understated, "comfort ye; speak ye peace" from the tenor, while the orchestra murmurs soothingly in the background. When the soprano tells you to "rejoice greatly," the music carries her to a place where she can't help but sound overcome with childlike glee; when the bass bellows, "Why do the nations so furiously rage together?", there is a raging storm going on underneath him in the strings to drive home the point. And towards the end, after the crucifixion and the famous Hallelujah chorus, Handel takes everything way down as the soprano sweetly (naively, perhaps?) asserts her certainty that Jesus still lives, and the chorus responds with a hushed, chilling declaration that "since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead."
It's bone-deep, this music, and though I've never studied the piece from a music theory perspective, I suspect that Handel was way ahead of his time in the way he approached its composition. Playing it doesn't feel like playing baroque music on modern instruments usually does; there's a muscularity and a defiant stride to the sound, and Handel makes use of effects that I know for a fact weren't in common use in church music, circa 1741. It's an opera without sets, really, and that might be why it's so popular among audiences. (In fact, I hear you're pretty much out of luck if you don't already have a ticket to our performances this week.) Stories you've already heard a thousand times need some serious immediacy if they're going to touch you in anything like a meaningful way, and Handel knew just what buttons to push.
