Christmas (or Holiday Season) Music

Post by **vison** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:12 am

I was just re-enjoying Loreena McKennit's "To Drive the Cold Winter Away", and also her "A Winter Garden". Most of this is "Christmas" music, but much of it was new to me when I bought these CD's a few years ago. Does anyone else here love them?

I'm not musical. I wish I was.

I can imagine the bliss of being able to sing! Imagine what it must be like to be able to sing!

I love music very much, but I can only really enjoy it when I'm alone. If I try to listen to music I love with other people around, I can't concentrate on either the music or the people. And if I put a CD on when I am sitting in the house, I inevitably pick up a book and then I'm lost to anything else. I hear nothing.

Since I don't play an instrument or sing, the experience of making music with friends is one I've never had.

Anyway, my Christmas music loves run from Handel to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" with Little Miss Dynamite (Brenda Lee), and many, many points in between.

I wonder what other posters love, in the way of "holiday music".

Post by **Impenitent** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 5:54 am

I'm not really one for holiday music if you mean by that Christmas holiday music. I do have a nostalgic appreciation of Bing's White Christmas album because it brings back feel-good sensations from way back as a kid when Christmas holidays meant summer and swimming and no school and good food and surfing (I know that contradicts a White Christmas, but I'm talking Oz. Besides, some of those beaches had very white sands.

)

On the other hand, I love african drumming combined with didgeridoos and acoustic guitars because that always reminds me of summer holidays at Confest - which is where we spent every new year from the age of about 24 to 35 (two small children made it more difficult - not enough sleep!)

Post by **Cerin** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 7:24 am

vison

Do you really not sing? Are you tone deaf, or just shy about trying? Everyone should sing. I had a music teacher once who said singing was just 'organized sighing'. I'm sure you can sigh, so if you can sigh, you can learn to sing. I don't sing very well myself, maybe your standard is too high?

I love all kinds of Christmas music, from the strange a cappella polyphonies of the middle ages to the modern Celtic Christmas celebrations. And almost everything inbetween.

One thing I found last year was that after listening to alot of early Christmas music done in the original style and instruments, that some more modern arrangements sounded overly brash and rococo. For example, one of my favorite Christmas records from childhood was a Mario Lanza album. But when I listen to those arrangements now, they seem almost unbearably clunky.

My favorite kind of Christmas sound is the English church choir sound, and my favorite one of those is the Choir from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Post by **Alatar** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 11:27 am

Impenitent wrote:I'm not really one for holiday music if you mean by that Christmas holiday music.

Does the "Fairytale of New York" do anything for you? It's not exactly schmaltzy...

Post by **Ethel** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 3:40 pm

Alatar wrote:Does the "Fairytale of New York" do anything for you? It's not exactly schmaltzy...

I love that song, Alatar. In fact I love all the early Pogues stuff. Nice to find another fan.

I love Christmas carols. When I'm with what's left of my 'family of origin' at Christmas - it's only my my and two brothers left now, plus my son and my one brother's wife and daughters - we always sing Christmas carols on Christmas eve. We do this because I sort bullied them into trying it years ago and it turned out that everyone really enjoyed it. Only my sister-in-law has a good singing voice (better than good actually; professional quality). But sounding good isn't the point. The point is the great pleasure to be had in voices, even off-key voices, raised together in beloved traditional song.

It is kind of nice to have the sister-in-law there keeping the tune though. The rest of us wander back and forth.

Post by **sauronsfinger** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 4:11 pm

I also am not a big Christmas person and the music is generally not my cup of tea. But having said that there is my favorite that I can hear at any time of the year and enjoy it tremendously. PRETTY PAPER sung by Roy Orbison. I recently was talking with my good friend in New MExico who told me that it was written by Willie Nelson. Imagine that.

The image of this man sitting on the curb crying as all the hustle and joy of Christmas swirls around him is my idea of Christmas.

Post by **Pearly Di** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 4:12 pm

I have an exceedingly cool CD by Anonymous 4 - a ladies' quartet from New York City - of Hungarian medieval Christmas music. Beautiful, haunting and somewhat austere.

I really love Advent and Christmas church music.

I also have a CD of English medieval carols.

One fave seasonal hymn/song: 'Gaudete', a lovely medieval plainchant either performed traditionally or the famous folk version by the incomparable Steeleye Span.

Vision, Loreena is

I must look out for both those albums.

Post by **truehobbit** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 7:38 pm

A very nice idea for a thread, vison!

Hmmh, I like Loreena McKennit, but I haven't heard of those songs.

I like the big classical pieces for Christmas, both vocal and instrumental, and I like singing the good old Christmas folktunes - there are dozens of them, it's hard to pick a favourite. And then there are the songs from the church songbook, which I adore.
Giving titles probably wouldn't make much sense, and as easy as the Internet is for sharing pics, as bothersome is it for sharing sound.

singing was just 'organized sighing'.

I like that definition - I guess it does compare in that a sigh usually also goes through the whole body, like singing should.

On the other hand, it's also the opposite of sighing - our choir director sometimes quotes a saying that "singing is the prevention of exhaling" - and this is true, too - you let the tone out, but not the air!

With respect to not being able to sing, I think most people can try to learn the physical things it takes to produce a sung note, and if the result still is not so that it would do for singing in public, it's still fun to sing to yourself!
But I think I also understand vison's dream to be able to really sing - whenever I hear a singer I like I think how wonderful it would be to be able to produce such a sound!

Post by **Rowanberry** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 11:37 pm

Essential parts of our Christmastime are the Phil Spector Christmas Album, and Christmas carols sung by Elvis Presley (I married an Elvis fan

).

Although I'm not religious myself, I like to listen to the New Hope Jazz Mass by Heikki Sarmanto, and some music of which I don't know if it's actual Christmas music or just church music in general, that we bought twentysomething years ago on our trip to Croatia (then a part of Yugoslavia) from the souvenir shop of the Cathedral of Sibenik.

I also often put Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker on the plate; I've got the music to the whole ballet, and as you may know, the events are set on Christmas night.

Post by **vison** » Fri Dec 02, 2005 11:57 pm

Rowanberry wrote:Essential parts of our Christmastime are the Phil Spector Christmas Album

Oh, that makes me laugh. A friend of mine HATES Phil Spector's Christmas Album, and so her brother-in-law gave it to her as a gift. She plays it ONCE each year, and grimaces in pain the entire time it's on.

I kinda like it, I admit, for the sheer lunacy of it. "Wall of sound" indeed.

Mind you, look how Phil Spector has ended up.

Post by **Rowanberry** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:04 am

vison wrote:Mind you, look how Phil Spector has ended up.

I know.

He has sunk really low.

But, many of his past achievements still stand - like the Christmas Album, which I like just because of the campiness of it.

Post by **Athrabeth** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:09 am

I do so love the music of Christmas!

In our house, it doesn't feel like Christmas until we put on the Roche sisters' CD, "We Three Kings".

Maggie and Terry and Suzzie................we loves them!

Their versions of "For Unto Us A Child is Born" (from the Messiah) "The Holly and the Ivy" and "Good King Wenceslas" (my two all-time favourite Christmas carols) are truly sw00nable. Very different from most other versions, too.

Even my "alternative rock" daughter and son insist on playing the CD on Christmas Eve as we finish decorating the tree, and wrap presents, and nibble munchies.

I'm just so very thankful that we don't have to play Raffi's Christmas album anymore. So very, very thankful.

Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:22 am

Even I have a favorite Christmas Album:

Jingle Bells (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Diana Ross & Supremes)
Frosty the Snowman (Jackson 5)
Silent Night (The Temptations)
The Little Drummer Boy (Jackson 5)
Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Diana Ross and the Supremes)
Silver Bells (Diana Ross and the Supremes)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (The Jackson 5)

Great stuff.

Post by **Alatar** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:24 am

The first Christmas album I remember was a Perry Como album. That silky smooth voice was just perfect. Nat King Cole is probably my favourite crooner but Perry Como was my first.

Nowadays we always play the double CD "Best Chritmas Album in the World Ever" when we're decorating. One of my favourite carols is the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet of Little Drummer Boy and Peace on Earth.

Magical.

Post by **Athrabeth** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:36 am

Bing Crosby and David Bowie???

I would simply LOVE to hear that, Alatar!

<is still trying to figure out what connection the Flintstones can possibly have to Motown>

I think I need a glass of wine now.

Post by **Athrabeth** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:41 am

Oh! I just remembered something.

When I was a kid, my very favourite Christmas album was one by Harry Belafonte. I still get the chills when I hear "Mary's Boy Child".

I loooooove Belafonte.

Post by **Rowanberry** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:50 am

Athrabeth wrote: When I was a kid, my very favourite Christmas album was one by Harry Belafonte. I still get the chills when I hear "Mary's Boy Child".

I've only got the Boney M disco cover version of that piece - although, that's a memory of my youth.

And, I've heard the Belafonte version on the radio, and I also like him in general.

Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:58 am

Ath, it is one of the mysteries of life. The great songs are separated by a minute or so of strange Flintstones dialogue about their trip to New Rock City for Christmas. Tres bizarre! But the songs are great.

I share your wonder about the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet. I can't imagine it, but I still imagine it to be great.

Dare I risk a brief Harry Bellafonte osgiliation? In the late Fifties, Bellafonte travelled to Guinea and was the driving force behind the creation of a movie called "Africa Dance" which featured among other things footage of my teacher, Mamady Keita, at the age of six, before he had ever left his remote village in northeast Guinea! (Mamady was an incredible prodigy.) Unfortunately, there are no known copies of this film in existance. Bellafonte was also closely involved with the creation of the Ballet National Djoliba, the national ballet of Guinea that Mamady was recruited for when he was 13.

Post by **sauronsfinger** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 2:33 am

I join Rowanberry in admiration of the Phil Spector efforts -- great stuff. I love the collection BACK ON MONO - of the great wall of sound that Spector was famous for before the recent unpleasantness. It tis sad.

Nobody got as much from girl groups as Spector. He was a tremendous musical genius. To know him is to love him.

Post by **cemthinae** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 4:09 am

I'm sure it would come as no surprise to hear that I love almost anything & everything Christmas!

I used to own more Christmas cds than any other genre!

I love everything from the schmaltzy pop songs to acapella versions of carols.

A few favourites spinning on the cd player right now are Jim Brickman's holiday cd, Glenn Miller Orchestra's In the Christmas Mood & Santa's Top Ten.