The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
One day more!
Oh, sorry…that has nothing at all to do with Christmas, does it? Sorry!
Another grab-bag post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P14jxKY3Gy8
I went to college with this guy! Jim McDonough was obviously talented “way back when”, but he’s really made good on his talent and made a great musical life for himself. Here’s an entire special he did for Iowa Public Teevee:
And now, if you’re a believer, it’s that last cold night before something amazing dawned.
Let’s see what’s in the Christmas music (and whatnot) grab-bag today, shall we?
I just happened to be watching this when they did it on the air, sometime in the 90s. It lodged in my brain forever. I love this:
An entire album here. I’m slowly warming to the classical guitar. (Not that I was exactly “cold” to the classical guitar before, so maybe that’s not the way to put it…it just wasn’t ever a major part of my listening.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsu9GUU4tvQ
Another full album because I couldn’t pick a single song off here:
And how’s this for a mood shift?
There’s no theme here…just songs and music and maybe something that’s not music at all. This will be the way of it for the balance of the season.
EDIT: One video has been removed because the uploader removed it. I’m guessing they didn’t like their video being embedded…and as I’ve no idea what it was at this point (I wrote and scheduled this post more than a week before it published), I’m not going to try and replicate it or find another source.
No further ado:
OK, I hope this works…I’ve never tried embedding a playlist on WordPress before! If it does work, here is the score to the film The Nativity Story, with music my Mychael Danna. I have not seen the film, but the score is wonderful in its ethereal meditative beauty, and as you listen through it you’ll hear a number of Christmas songs and carols quoted throughout.
As I write this, I am scrambling to get all of these posts written and scheduled before we take flight; as you read this, we are traveling and (hopefully) having a great time in our tropical destination. So, that’s my way of saying that we’re now at the part of the program where this feature will mostly be repeats of old favorites of mine, and commentary will be…less.
That said, here is the original version of one of my favorite Christmas albums: The Many Moods of Christmas, with Robert Shaw conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra and the Robert Shaw Chorale. When I say this is the original version of a favorite album, I am referring to the fact that Shaw and his chorale recorded this music twice: first with this album in the 1960s, and then later again, with the Atlanta Symphony, in the 1980s. This later recording is the one I own on CD someplace, but this is the original.
And they’re both great!
Victor Hely-Hutchison was a British composer whose music was well-known in his day but who is almost completely forgotten now, except for one piece: a collection of four chorale preludes, each based on a Christmas carol, that he titled A Carol Symphony. It’s one of the delightful listens to which I return each year.
And here it is!
It’s a week away! I’m scheduling this in advance, but I know that as December gets deeper and darker and somehow the light that we hope for from Christmas seems as elusive as ever, this is about when I get contemplative about it all. Christmas is a search for certainty, in a way–and if you’re in particular religious traditions, Christmas is about the arrival of the great certainty of all–but it’s also a time of memories and sadnesses for those who aren’t with us this year and for thoughts of what is to come.
Here are two songs that capture the sadder, more introspective, and less certain aspects of Christmas for me. And in the case of this first selection, I’ll skip the business about the incorrect version of the lyrics that everyone else sings.
I don’t remember if the subject ever came up when I was a kid in grade school music classes during Christmas time, but it’s always worth noting how old many of our traditional Christmas carols are. In fact, the concept of the carol, being a festive song often accompanied by a dance and not necessarily connected to a specific holiday or religious festival, is itself almost a thousand years old. In our Christmas music we can find the most familiar remaining vestiges of our musical heritage from hundreds of years past. Here’s a carol, still very much alive, that is first recorded as emerging in the Provence region of France four hundred years ago.
(It’s also my mother’s favorite, which is absolutely why I run it every year!)
Let’s compare how two composers conveyed the emotions of a sleigh ride!
Here’s Mozart, who wrote a pleasant and stately minuet befitting Viennese nobility:
And here’s Leroy Anderson, who envisioned the equestrian rhythm and the bells and even, at the end, the horse’s whinny:
And since The Wife and I recently watched Sleepless In Seattle, there’s an early scene where Meg Ryan sings along with a version of “Sleigh Ride” she hears on her radio. Here’s that rendition (which is more a rendition of “Jingle Bells”, but what are you gonna do):
Finally, here’s a high school from Lowell, Michigan, that had to do the “virtual” thing last year. This is actually quite lovely!