In this year of America 250 observations, naturally I would be inclined to look back to the 18th century. While a frigid New Year’s Day at the Philadelphia Mummers Parade is the big New Year’s tradition around here (it’s a regional thing; if you don’t know it, look it up), I’ll welcome 2026 in a more civilized manner: in my periwig, seated at the harpsichord, pecking out these “Auld Lang Syne Variations.”
It’s a new discovery for me, by a composer named… Ross!
Happy New Year, everyone!
Franz Waxman, of course, was one of the great film composers. His music can be heard in “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Rebecca,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Rear Window,” “Peyton Place,” “The Spirit of St. Louis,” and dozens of others.
It was customary that Waxman and his family would get together with their neighbors, the Jascha Heifetzes, to welcome the new year with an evening of chamber music. Other guests on these occasions would include violist William Primrose and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky.
Mainstream classical fare would dominate the festivities until the countdown to midnight. With the turn of the year, the musical selections would become a bit more frivolous.
Waxman composed his “Auld Lang Syne Variations” in 1947, for one such gathering. This party piece sends up the traditional New Year’s anthem in the styles of several well-known composers.
Feel free to play along and test your musical knowledge. You’ll find further clues in the work’s subtitles, listed below the video on YouTube. One can only imagine Heifetz stepping out in “Chaconne à Son Gout.”
Happy New Year!
It’s always good practice to pay proper obeisance to a man with a scythe and nothing to lose. So try not to make too big a fuss about the kid in the diaper this week on “Sweetness and Light.”
I hope you’ll join me for a playlist that will blend the wisdom of experience with the exuberance of innocence. We’ll flip the hourglass to enjoy a few selections from operetta, including a concert overture on themes from Franz Lehár’s “The Merry Widow,” a duet from Oscar Straus’ “A Waltz Dream,” and the irresistible “Song of the Laugh,” an insert aria employed in Sidney Jones’ “The Geisha,” in a vintage recording, performed by Ukrainian soprano Claudia Novikova. Trust me, it will put a smile on your face.
In addition, we’ll have some variations on the familiar New Year’s melody “Auld Lang Syne” – one a playful multi-movement set in the styles of different composers by Franz Waxman (who wrote scores for such classic films as “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and “The Nun’s Story”), conceived for an informal New Year’s Eve get-together with his neighbor, Jascha Heifetz, and friends; the other, an orchestral showpiece incorporating parodies of no less than 129 familiar melodies, by British Light Music master Ernest Tomlinson.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who enjoyed a successful run of reviving the operettas of Johann Strauss II, brought some of that same breezy Old World elegance to his own Hollywood film scores, proving that you can take the composer out of Vienna, but you can’t take Vienna out of the composer, as demonstrated in his “Flirtation Waltz” from the 1936 Errol Flynn classic “The Prince and the Pauper.”
With only days left in 2024, Father Time still has a few tricks up his sleeve. I hope you’ll join me in raising a mimosa (or two) to the old man this week on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it wherever you are at the link:
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have contrasting works for the New Year by two English composers whose surnames begin with “T.”
Sir Michael Tippett’s fifth and final opera is an especially abstruse one, even by Tippett standards. Composed on his own libretto, “New Year” is set in Terror Town, an imaginary city that exists “somewhere today.” The dramatis personae includes such diverse characters as a child psychiatrist, her Rastafarian foster brother, a shaman, and three time-travelers from the future – or, as Tippett specifies, “nowhere tomorrow.”
The orchestral suite opens and closes with music for the arrival and departure of a spaceship, represented electronically, on New Year’s Eve. Other striking touches include the use of saxophones, and, at the work’s climax, a quotation of “Auld Lang Syne,” pitted against a rather turbulent backdrop.
“New Year” was first performed at Houston Grand Opera in 1989, with the British premiere taking place at Glyndebourne the following year. The opera was not well received. The wholly reimagined suite was commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 1990. Tippett noted that the primary metaphor of the opera is dance. Hey, man, whatever.
The balance of the program will be devoted to works by a composer of a very different sensibility – master of British Light Music, Ernest Tomlinson. It is Tomlinson’s tongue-in-cheek assertion that the melody of “Auld Lang Syne” underlies most of the world’s great masterpieces. He goes on to support his thesis with no less than 152 examples in his dizzyingly clever “Fantasia on ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”
We’ll conclude with a waltz from Tomlinson’s “Cinderella,” someone else who clearly understands the transformative power of 12.
The kettle is on. Turn over a new leaf and join me for a cuppa, with “’T’ Time” – welcoming the New Year with music by Tippett and Tomlinson – this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
For anyone sober enough to actually ponder the text, “Auld Lang Syne” must be the most melancholy song on the planet. And for everyone else to be singing it on New Year’s Eve – good Lord, which way is the nearest bridge?
If New Year’s is not a difficult time for you, take a moment today to count your blessings. For the rest of us, it is my hope that the playlist this afternoon will operate on two levels: not only as a festive celebration of the turn of the year, but also a reminder of the consolation and hope that music can provide.
I’ll be keeping it light with a potpourri of nimble dances, euphonious British Light Music, and rib-tickling selections from music-oriented comedy albums, with perhaps just a few highlights from the world of operetta, provided that sentiment won’t weigh too heavily on the heart.
I can’t promise that the New Year holiday will be a happy one, but I will do my best to serve up some great musical hors d’oeuvres. We’ll be laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, this Monday from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Remember: Your year-end contribution will still count toward 2018 through 11:59 tonight! If you appreciate all that we do at The Classical Network, and the music is an indispensable part of your life, please consider visiting our website now and clicking on “donate.” Thank you for your continued support of The Classical Network! And for what it’s worth, Happy New Year.
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