The day is here! May your Holiday be filled with merriment and good cheer. Merry Christmas, everyone!

One more day….

My general tradition when I get to the 24th is to post a grab-bag of favorites that didn’t get their own posts this year. But hardly also-rans–these are greats and favorites that I don’t want to ignore. So, let’s go! No commentary, just music. (Well, maybe a little commentary….)

(These last two offered in memory of Robert John Guttke, who loved these composers and these two works in particular.)

Another year gone by without seeing The Nutcracker live. What in God’s name am I waiting for? Well, I don’t know. This Christmas season has been unusually chaotic and hard to plan. For me the problem was twofold, I think. First, there was the fact that Thanksgiving was as late as it can possibly be, so that once it was over, there was already less than four weeks to Christmas. That’s way too short a time to pack in everything. Second…well, this is the second Christmas since Mom died and…well, I’ll write about Dad some other time. Suffice it to say that it’s really sunk in this year that the old memories are just that: memories, and the old traditions have joined them.

But I still have some traditions, such as this series of posts. And putting aside two hours at some point, even if it is over several lunch breaks at work, to watch The Nutcracker. Here’s the one I took in this year. This is one of the more magical versions I’ve watched, and the music-making is superlative.

(I’m eschewing the Nutcracker Suite this year. Please make time to lose yourself in this fantasy world, if you can. I still think of my old college orchestra conductor, Dr. Janice Wade, when I hear the numbers that make up the Suite. I hope she doesn’t mind that Maestro Gergiev here does the last bars of the “Waltz of the Flowers” in a way that she personally did not.)

As a lover of film music for just about all my life, here are some film music selections from Christmas movies!

First, from 1984’s A Christmas Carol, the one starring George C. Scott:

Next, a suite from the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, the one starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge. Which I have never actually seen, even though the wide-spread consensus is that Sim’s Scrooge is definitive to the point of being iconic. I don’t know about that, but the music is certainly damned good, and it should be: it’s written by Richard Addinsell, that fine English composer who is best known for another piece of music he wrote for film, the amazing Rachmaninoff-pastiche Warsaw Concerto, written for the film Suicide Squadron.

Moving into more contemporary times, but staying in the London area, we have this compilation of the three major love themes from Love Actually. This movie has sustained something of a backlash in recent years, but I will hear none of that. NONE, you hear?

Much has also been said of the Robert Zemeckis adaptation of The Polar Express, which I do in fact enjoy a great deal, even if the animation of the eyes isn’t quite…up to par, I suppose. Alan Silvestri turned in a wonderfully evocative and sweeping score for this one. Silvestri is one of those composers who probably doesn’t rank at the fore, but a second rate hack, he ain’t.

Finally, here’s one that I haven’t had the best relationship with over the years. I think my “I love John Williams” bona fides are well-established by now, but in all honesty, I have never much liked his score to Home Alone. However, I’ve given some selections from it a fresh listen this year and I do find myself warming to it, a bit. I still think he explored moods like this more effectively in films like Hook and the Harry Potter films (the ones he scored, obviously). But I do find myself appreciating his Home Alone music more than I used to. I’m still not a fan of the movie itself, but the music is good. I’ve come to hear it as Williams in “Carl Stalling” mode: he’s basically scoring a cartoon, live-action though it may be, which is loaded with gonzo action.

Earlier in the month I featured a Christmas song by The Killers, a band I’ve been delving much more deeply into this year (more to come on that in my end-of-year summation post). So now I’m thinking, “What about some of my other favorite bands and acts?” So, a tour of Christmas sounds of other bands and artists that I like! (I am limiting this to living performers.)

Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors:

Shannon Dooks:

Dolly Parton:

Kelly Clarkson:

Heart:

Blackmore’s Night:

The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra:

Here’s another annual feature on this site, because it’s as perfect a rendition of a song as I can remember. No cover has ever come close–well, maybe Bing Crosby, but that’s about it. Certainly not the more famous Frank Sinatra version in which he foisted that awful “Hang a shining star on the highest bough” lyric on the world, because he wanted it to be more cheerful.

This is not a song about cheerfulness in general. It is a song about finding what cheer you can, what joy you can, however momentary, in the midst of whatever else is going on in your life. It’s about hoping that someday soon we all can be together, but also about muddling through as best we can until that day comes, if it ever does.

Strong opinions, I know, but I cannot abide “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough”. It’s a totally meaningless lyric, crafted for scansion and rhyme and that’s it. And I cannot abide the erasure of Judy Garland that happens every time any version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” other than her original, from Meet Me In St. Louis, plays on the radio.

I was pretty thoughtful and introspective and a little sad yesterday, so here is a selection of comedic Christmas bits I feature most years. These don’t get old!

We’re about a week out from Christmas. For those who have been around my site for a while, this is when I generally start revisiting old favorites, maybe with new versions or videos, or maybe not. This song is required for me this time of year. I know that some people find it cheesy or corny, and some others don’t think it’s particularly a Christmas song other than the fact that its events are said to happen on Christmas Eve, but for me this song is absolutely a part of Christmas–or rather, the emotions it captures are deeply wound up with the season.

I don’t know if it’s Christmas or the fact that the year is ending, but the season always seems to include moments of looking back and wondering about the roads we didn’t take, the dreams that we deferred and ultimately lost. Maybe it’s the old lover who got away, the one about whom you often find yourself wondering even though your life since then has gone pretty well, even if the “touring is hell”. Or maybe it’s something else entirely: realizing as you accumulate years past 50 that you’re not the writer you once hoped you’d be, or thinking about how you once thought there would be more than one kid with you at Christmas. Maybe it’s wishing for one more Christmas with one of both of your parents. That is what this song is about: the maybes that pile up through our lives, and the fact that once in a while life conspires to give us the smallest glimpse of what the maybe might have been, had we said this or done that at a particular moment, way back when.

But that’s all we ever get, isn’t it: just a glimpse, and it’s not even that, really. And somehow, when we turn to go back home, the snow has always turned to rain.

Every year, at some point while gathering pieces for this feature, I go to Google and type in “[nationality] Christmas music”, which usually turn up something interesting. This year I searched “Russian Christmas Music”, and I found a piece actually titled Russian Christmas Music. It’s a work for wind band (or wind ensemble, or concert band, whatever) by Alfred Reed.

The piece is apparently crafted to reflect the sound of liturgical choral music of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and thus is highly lyrical with a singing quality throughout. Four distinct sections are heard: “Carol of the Little Russian Children”, “Antiphonal Chant”, “Village Song”, and “Cathedral Chorus”. From what I can tell, the piece is very popular and is performed often by advanced concert bands and wind ensembles. To my knowledge, I had never heard it before this. And what a find it is! 

Had I realized that Dick Van Dyke was going to turn 99 the other day, I would have timed this better. Alas! I truly hope I can revisit this properly next year when we’ll be celebrating his centenary. The man is truly a treasure.

Here are two clips: one from The Dick Van Dyke Show from years ago (I have no idea what the context here is, other than it’s a Christmas episode because Santa is there–or rather, a guy playing Santa is there–but you can watch the entire episode here!) and a more recent number pairing Mr. Van Dyke with Jane Lynch, who I never expected to turn out to be this awesome when I first saw her doing good work in a supporting role in 1993’s The Fugitive.