May your Christmas be full of love and good cheer.
Category: Daily Dispatch
-
Christmas Eve Music Parry Vaughan Williams
On Christmas Eve, with much gift wrapping and cooking yet to be done, we pause to remember the story of the first Christmas with music by a couple of English composers inspired by the Nativity.
Alongside Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry was one of the key figures of the so-called “English Musical Renaissance.” He influenced a whole generation of much better known composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. We’ll hear his “Ode on the Nativity,” given its first performance on the same concert, at the Hereford Three Choirs Festival in 1912, as Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on Christmas Carols.”
Vaughan Williams, the great-nephew of Charles Darwin and an atheist in his youth, later softened into a kind of cheerful agnosticism. He dearly loved the King James Bible, and he especially enjoyed Christmas. Of course, he wrote much music on the subject. In fact, his very last composition was “The First Nowell.” He worked diligently at the piece, inspired by medieval pageants, during his final month, but died suddenly before its completion.
However, even at 85 years-old, RVW retained a remarkable concentration. He managed to pound out the whole thing in short score in only a few weeks. Furthermore, he had actually orchestrated the first two-thirds. The finishing touches were applied by his assistant, Roy Douglas – he of “Les Sylphides” fame.
If you like the “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” I think you’ll really enjoy this. It’s pastoral music for a pastoral scene. Join me for “A Play in a Manger,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
-
Christmas Movie Music From Classic Books
Remember when movies used to be inspired by books, as opposed to toys and video games?
This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have an hour of music from movies adapted from novels and short stories on Christmas themes, or with memorable Christmas moments.
We’ll begin with Alfred Newman’s score for “O. Henry’s Full House,” a 1952 anthology based on five separate stories of O. Henry, each adapted by a different screenwriter and directed by a separate director. The film is doubly literary in that each of its segments is introduced by none other than John Steinbeck. We’ll be listening to music from the final portion, based on the classic Christmas story, “The Gift of the Magi.”
Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” features a memorable Christmas chapter, in which the Marches help out a neighbor in need by donating their Christmas breakfast – only to be rewarded later in the day with a feast of their own. “Little Women” has been adapted to film at least five times (reportedly with another on the way). Thomas Newman – son of Alfred – wrote the Academy Award-nominated score for the 1994 version, the one with Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon.
Miklós Rózsa won his third Academy Award for “Ben-Hur” (filmed three times), in 1959. We’ll be listening to music from the prologue and Nativity scene. General Lew Wallace’s novel, published in 1880, became the bestselling work of American fiction for the next 50 years. Its streak was broken in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind.”
Finally, we’ll have a suite from the 1951 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (released in the UK as “Scrooge”). I can’t even count how many times that one’s been filmed. This particular version stars the great Alastair Sim. The music was composed by Richard Addinsell – he of the “Warsaw Concerto” fame – and the performance is conducted by David Newman, Alfred Newman’s OTHER musical son.
Settle in for a library of Christmas classics, this Friday evening at 6:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
-
Merlin in Bethlehem A Christmas Music Surprise
Who likes when Merlin shows up in the Christmas story? We all do, of course!
Join me around 9:00 this Thursday morning on WPRB to hear Rutland Boughton’s “Bethlehem,” a choral drama adapted from the 14th century Coventry Nativity Play. Composed in 1915, and written very much in the English pastoral idiom, the work incorporates settings of familiar carols, such as “O come, all ye faithful” and “The Holly and the Ivy.”
Taking a page from Richard Wagner, Boughton composed a cycle of five operas on Arthurian themes and started a Glastonbury Festival, in the style of Bayreuth. Alas, neither the operas nor the festival, as it was originally conceived, have endured.
In Boughton’s “Bethlehem,” the shepherds bear gifts of a penny whistle, a hat, and a pair of warm mittens. The Three Wise Men hobnob with Herod, Zarathustra, and, yes, Merlin. If you gravitate toward the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, you’re bound to fall under the work’s disarming spell.
It’s one of our featured highlights this Thursday morning, from 6 to 11 EST, as we anticipate the winter solstice (at 11:28), on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com.
-
Yule Solstice Music Bonfires on WPRB
On this shortest day, as the warg Sköll, descendent of unruly Fenrir, chases down the sun, we’ll boldly feast, game, share stories, and quaff mead. Most of all, there will bonfires – lots of bonfires. This Thursday morning on WPRB, we’ll anticipate the arrival of winter (at 11:28 EST) by cutting mistletoe, decking the halls, and filling the air waves with festive and reflective music for the solstice.
Heathen impulses will be tempered by a couple of large-scale, more-or-less Christian choral works. In the 7:00 hour, we’ll hear “The Star of Bethlehem,” by everyone’s favorite composer from Lichtenstein, Josef Rheinberger, in a performance featuring Rita Streich and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Then at 9:00, we’ll enjoy “Bethlehem,” by English composer Rutland Boughton, a work inspired by the 14th century Coventry Mystery Play. How else to incorporate Merlin into the Christmas story?
There will also be plenty of Swedish folk high jinks, a shape-shifting, vampiric reindeer from Lapland, a serenade or two to the Boar’s Head from Great Britain, and abundant selections from “The Christmas Revels.”
Get ready to sacrifice five hours to the Yule gods, even as we celebrate the arrival of the Baby Jesus, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EST, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I think Yule love it, on Classic Ross Amico.
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (138) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (103) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (153) Mozart (88) Opera (208) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (108) Radio (88) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (103) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)