In preparing The Review for this month, we inevitably have discussions about Christmas music when we’re wearing shorts, eating dinner outside, and complaining about the mosquitos. (For the inimitable David M. Greene’s thoughts about holiday music and writing about holiday music, we’ve included some of his more memorable complaints essays in this Review.)
Our Christmas selections are rather traditional, we offer choirs singing the entire range of Christmas vocal music, from the Renaissance to Rutter. We do lack a large pops orchestra recital of Christmas music in this year’s Review selections. There is one that qualifies, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, but we discovered it too late to include it in this year’s Review. The process of reviving the enormous catalog of MHS is painstaking and quite like looking for shells on the beach. If you’re looking for shells, you’re bound to find them. If you’re looking for something quite specific, that’s going to take some time.
See – we did it again – while writing about Christmas music, we return to summer imagery…perhaps our readers in Australia or anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere can relate.
Perhaps a bit crabby, like summer grass can get (sorry, did it again, but this time on purpose) this writer undertook his assignment full on. And with the chance to write about the first complete reissue of the complete Carols for Brass, recorded for Musical Heritage Society over 30 years ago, my mind was ready and filled with questions and pithy comments, ready to entertain and educate you, our fine readers.
Armed with caffeine, I set out to throw down the gauntlet: why the heck do we celebrate Christmas in a musical fashion with SO MUCH DARN BRASS MUSIC?
To take a holiday about peace, joy, and an infant and somehow throw in a brass ensemble to establish a signature sound, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In the spirit of DM Greene, what about all of this Christmas celebration really makes sense if you probe one millimeter below the surface.
The easy answer is to blame the secularization of Christmas. Christmas morning is now no longer associated with an early church service of your choosing, in fact, many articles appeared last Christmas season about how churches are having difficulty staffing for Christmas services, because, let’s face it, two words: Christmas pajamas…enough said, right?
My Christmas memories include my father’s memorization of a speech from the original TV animated version of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” when the Grinch (who lived just north of Whoville) bleats out his own laundry list of the noisemakers involved with Christmas morning in Whoville. I don’t have it at the tip of my tongue any more, but it included such Suessisms as pantookas and wuzzles.
Even when I mildly objected to the choice of these recordings as a main selection, I was instantly reminded that this music accompanies us at all shopping events and every walk down an urban street at Christmas (at least it does in the Christmas movies).
Therein, noise and Christmas are intertwined, right? So unless you want to go back to a quieter time, you’ll just have to deal.
Well, about those quieter times…Richard Price’s fine notes for this collection (a combination of the two essays he wrote for each volume) inform us that the practice of loud music at Christmas goes back to the ramparts of the medieval castle. Musicians would trumpet (literally) the happy day with horns and other loud instrument-type things so there would be no mistaking this was a holiday and a celebration. And composers began to incorporate these happenings into their own commemorations of the Nativity (post-Nativity, really), and thus, a musical tradition was born, and lots of tuba players have a reason to live. (Although in these fine notes, you’ll discover some very grumpy people in the time of Olver Cromwell decided that Christmas was just something that was better off banned.)
And so, as you donated to the Salvation Army, or walk along a city street, with other celebrators, you can escape from the endless noise by participating in the holiday tradition of having your ears blown out by brass instruments. Better still – just say “Alexa, turn down the volume.”
