You know how sometimes a song will have a great tune and a great beat, but when you listen to the lyrics you’re kind of repulsed? For me one great example of this is the first of the 1980s pop music charity hits, “Do They Know It’s Christmastime”, by “Band-Aid”, a super-group made up of a whole lot of big names at the time. The song is basically asking if the starving Africans have any idea that it’s even Christmastime, so awful has their lot become. I’m always thinking, “Why wouldn’t they? They have calendars. Just because they’re dealing with a lot of shit doesn’t mean they don’t know what the date is.” And besides, there are a lot of Christians in Africa too. The whole song always bugs me (and not just for Bono’s lyric, “Well tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you!” Yikes.)
Anyway, yes, they know it’s Christmastime in Africa. Here’s some musical evidence.
So far this year we’ve had about an inch of snow altogether at Casa Jaquandor, and at the moment the grass is green and the woods are brown and everything is wet and muddy. Meteorologically, we just aren’t in the Christmas mood yet.
But anyway, here’s “Sleigh Ride”, in the original orchestral version and the Johnny Mathis version with words, because hey, it’s Buffalo! It’s gotta snow sometime, right? Six years ago we were still digging out from seven feet of the shit!
Anyway, here’s the music.
I wonder if Currier and Ives knew that this song was what would carry their names into the ages….
Oh heck, here’s another version, the short Roy Rogers and Dale Evans version that blends Sleigh Ride with Jingle Bells and if you listen to it you’ll walk around all day humming “Harses harses harses” to yourself. You may remember this version from Sleepless in Seattle, when Meg Ryan sings along with it while driving….
Songwriter Adam Schlesinger died earlier this year. He was one of the first high-profile deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic. He was also one of the brilliant creative geniuses behind the amazing show Crazy Ex Girlfriend, and many of that show’s best songs reflect his creative stamp…including this one.
Here’s “California Christmastime” from Season One of Crazy Ex Girlfriend, one of my favorite shows ever.
If you took piano lessons as a kid for any length of time, you probably played some Beethoven. And if that’s the case, then the odds are very good that the Beethoven you played included his Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, more familiarly called Für Elise. And if you never did take piano lessons, odds are that you’ve heard this piece. If not for his Fifth and Ninth symphonies, there’s a good chance that Für Elise would be the most familiar piece Beethoven ever wrote.
And that’s interesting, because it turns out that the piece was never heard in Beethoven’s own lifetime, and in fact would not be discovered by the musical world until four decades after the composer’s death. The piece is quite short; in fact, the word “Bagatelle” refers to a small, short piece for piano. And the title? “For Elise”? That seems obvious, right? Beethoven wrote the piece as a gift for someone named Elise…but some scholars have agreed that this is based on a misreading of Beethoven’s legendarily awful handwriting, and what he actually wrote on the manuscript (which is now lost) was “For Therese”.
Therese was 18 years old and one of Beethoven’s piano students. Her father was a medical doctor who treated Beethoven for some of his many illnesses. Beethoven was quite taken with her from their first meeting and soon began heaping great praise on her piano skills, which weren’t all that notable. There was probably some flirting on Therese’s side, as it would have been very flattering to have a famous musician like Beethoven falling all over himself to impress her. He started cleaning up, ordered new clothing, and even combed his wild mane of hair.
Last but not least, he wrote her a piece of music, composed deliberately for her skill level. All seemed well, at least to Beethoven. Then everything came crashing down. Although we don’t know exactly what happened, later letters to and from Beethoven speak of an unfortunate incident at the Malfatti home. Beethoven had a little too much punch and behaved rudely with Therese, and she rejected him outright. In a later letter to Therese, Beethoven wrote about the piece he had written for her and invited her to find its hidden meaning. “Work it out for yourself, but do not drink punch to help you,” he wrote, apparently referring to the unfortunate incident that ended their relationship.
Also interesting is how this piece, apparently an unpublished trifle that Beethoven didn’t even keep a copy of for his own archives, came down to us:
It was found in Therese’s personal papers in 1851, 41 years after it was probably written. A small piece, Beethoven gave it its formal name, “Bagatelle”. But it was what he wrote at the top of the page that not only gave this piece its informal name, but also created a mystery that has fascinated students of the history of Für Elise ever since.
At the top of the page, Beethoven wrote (translated from German): “For Elise on 27 April to remind you of L.V. Bthvn”. Ludwig Nohl, a German music scholar, discovered the original manuscript in Beethoven’s own handwriting among her musical papers, transcribed it, and published it in 1867 in a book he edited of Beethoven’s letters. The original has since been lost, so we have had to rely on Nohl’s copy of it.
Imagine having something you just tossed off one night becoming one of the enduring works of all classical music, so enduring that the piece has become on its own a kind of cliche. Try listening to it again, though, beginning to end! Note the way the harmonies and the melody blend together so you can’t have one without the other, and note the contrasts between the famous main melody and the less-familiar intervening sections. And if your memories of your piano teacher are pleasant ones, think of them, too!
(My teacher, Mrs. Hooker, never had me play Für Elise. My personal gateway to Beethoven was the “Moonlight” Sonata.)
So I was curious: Did Judy Garland ever record the song “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”? I did a very quick search and didn’t find anything…but I did find this rendition, by an apparently very young Frank Sinatra. Apparently Sinatra never did a studio recording of this song, but he did do it on a radio show of his, and that recording turns up here.
I still don’t know if Garland did the song, so if anyone knows one way or the other, don’t keep me in suspense!
British composer Gerald Finzi was not prolific, which can be seen one of two ways: either the world was denied further work of fine quality by his slow process, or his slow process was essential to his work as a composer. Either way, Finzi wrote in a Romantic, English-pastoral vein that reflects influences of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Much of his work is meditative and full of lush harmonies, and his choral writing is outstanding. All of that is on display in In terra pax, one of his last works. Here Finzi combines the text of a poem by Robert Bridges, “Noel: Christmas Eve 1913” with the famous telling of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke. He gives the words of the poet to a baritone soloist, and the words of the Angel from Luke to a soprano, with the chorus handling the rest. Even though the work starts off hauntingly and quietly, there is drama later on as the dynamic become quite expansive when Luke tells us that the shepherds were “sore afraid”.
Here is the text of the start of Bridges’s poem:
Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
A frosty Christmas Eve
when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me
peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds
ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o’er.
In terra pax is a wonderful choral miniature piece, a masterwork by a composer who isn’t heard enough.
So far, this Christmas season doesn’t seem to be off to the most joyful start, does it? I remember hearing this song quite frequently during the Christmas season, but it doesn’t seem to show up all that often anymore. And in truth, it’s not really strictly a Christmas song at all, is it? It’s set at Christmas, but that’s not the same thing. However, I could say the exact same thing about “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg, which I feature in this space every single year, and almost certainly will later this year.
So here’s a sad song about a breakup that happens at Christmastime, which is surely among the worst times such a thing can happen…but really, is there a good time? Here’s “River” by Joni Mitchell, performed by the amazing Sarah McLachlan.
And I promise I’ll start posting some actually happy music one of these days.
I often feel a bit sorry for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major. It just doesn’t get talked about that much. Symphonies 1 and 2? Those get discussed as the early works they are, when Beethoven was just starting to move beyond the Haydn and Mozart influences on his work. Then, of course, comes the epochal milestone in music that is the Third, the mighty Eroica, famed for the original dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte, which Beethoven ripped asunder when he learned that his French hero had declared himself Emperor.
And of course, there is the Fifth, the great and glorious Fifth, perhaps the single most performed symphony of all time, a work whose opening bars comprise music that is as familiar to the ear as the Mona Lisa is to the eye. Even the Sixth, the Pastoral, gets more respect than the Fourth, with its wonderful rustic tone-painting.
Rivers of ink have been spilled over the centuries since the Seventh arrived, one of the grandest masterpieces in all of music history, and even the Eighth–the slight, small, intimate Eighth–gets some love here and there. And we’ll come back to the magnificent edifice that is the Ninth later this month. But there, seemingly alone in the middle of the most perfect collection of symphonies ever composed, is the Fourth, the sunny and genial Fourth.
There is no “Fate knocking on the door” here, nor is there a funeral march in place of a traditional slow movement. There is no “apotheosis of the Dance” to be found in the Fourth, nor is there a plaintive depiction of the woods around Vienna that Beethoven loved so much, and certainly there is no wonderful hymn to Joy.
All there is in this work is Beethoven smiling.
The first movement kicks off with a long minor-key introduction, perhaps hinting at serious thoughts to come…but when we arrive at a series of chords that finally resolve into our home key of B-flat, all the clouds disperse and what follows is pure sun and cheer. The genial mood carries into the slow movement, which is dominated by a pulsing rhythm that puts one in mind of Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony, with the same degree of amiability. Toward the end of the movement there is a moment of pure delight as the horn, clarinet, flute, and strings exchange arpeggiated passages.
Our third movement, a scherzo, doesn’t thunder or storm the way Beethoven scherzos often do. This one flits and jokes, with Beethoven giving us rhythms that don’t quite feel like they line up. There is some fantastic writing for the woodwinds in this movement, especially for the bassoons in the middle. And the finale is pure energy, not quite as propulsive as what would come later in, say, the finale to the Seventh, but compelling in the forward momentum of its moto perpetuo construction, before it finally arrives at the thrilling coda.
Why has the Fourth never quite become as beloved as so many of–if not all of–the other eight of Beethoven’s symphonies? I honestly do not know, but I wonder if part of that is because we often seem to like our Beethoven with at least some of his characteristic darkness. We want to hear at least a little of the man who shook his fist at the thundering clouds when he was on his deathbed. We’re not sure what to make of this odd Fourth symphony, a work in which this composer who went deaf and who struggled mightily to make musical sense of the ideas he scrawled in his notebooks seems to be largely in a mood of brightness and good cheer.
Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I really do love the Fourth.
This is the month when Ludwig van Beethoven turns 250 years old…fifteen days from now, to be precise. In honor of this, I’ll be stepping up the frequency of Beethoven-related posts–not quite daily, I expect, but there will be a lot of Beethoven this month, with a special post on the 16th, Beethoven’s actual anniversary. Let’s kick things off with an overture to one of Beethoven’s signature works, his only opera, Fidelio. Among Beethoven’s passions–in fact, after music, maybe his greatest passion–were the ideas of freedom and liberty. Beethoven lived in a deeply revolutionary era (I am reading a book about this aspect of his personality right now, but more on that later in the month), and he believed deeply in the liberal ideals that France would express as Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. These values inform his opera, in which a woman goes undercover as a man to rescue her husband, who has been unjustly accused. The opera itself is a great work, and its overture (which was the last of four that Beethoven composed for it, being ever the perfectionist) is representative of many of Beethoven’s finest aspects as a composer.
Well, it’s December 1, do let’s get started with this year’s musical run-up to Christmas, shall we? I know, I know–this ghastly year is more limping toward Christmas than anything else, but there’s nothing we can do about the calendar, and all we really can so is try to find what light we can.
Longtime followers will not be surprised that I’m featuring this particular song, because I do every year…but never on the very first day of December. I usually wait on this one, because it’s not obviously cheery. Lontime followers of mine will also know that I always accompany this song with my objection to the changing of the lyrics, at the behest of Frank Sinatra, that has become pretty well standardized ever since he figured that part of the original lyric wasn’t sufficiently brimming with Holiday cheer. And this year is no different…in fact, if ever a year made the case for keeping the original lyrics, this is the one.
Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow; Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow, So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
What lyrics could we possibly have this year, when so many of us are unable to be together at Christmastime (or any other time)? “If the fates allow,” indeed…and indeed, all we can do is “muddle through somehow”. That’s all we can ever do, really…but 2020 has made it manifest.
So let’s enter December, trying to find what hope we may…even as we muddle through somehow.
