Is there a more popular Christmas carol/song than Silent Night?
Possibly not.
Silent Night was written in 1818 with lyrics by Joseph Mohr and music by Fanz Xavier Gruber.
Dresden Choir
The Bing Crosby version recorded in 1935 is the fourth best-selling single of all time.
The Mannheim Steamroller version has always been my favorite. I'm not really sure why, but it speaks to me. Every year when I hear it that first time at Christmas, I'm in love all over again.
This version of the song is full of good memories. It takes me back to my childhood. I listened to it with my family. It's not Christmas for me until I've heard this whole album. Then we got to play an orchestral version in high school. When I found out I was so excited because the whole second half of the song is violin solo! I was concertmaster at the time and that was going to be me!
Except it wasn't. The orchestral version gives that solo to the cello. I was so mad. I still love the song, though.
One of my favorite Christmas stories begins with Silent Night. Here is a beautiful Sainsbury's ad that shows what happened one Christmas Eve during World War One.
There are Christmas songs that I love, and Christmas songs that I hate. And sometimes they are the same song. It entirely depends on the arrangement. The Twelve Days of Christmas is one of those. When sung straight, it's horribly boring*. But when people do fun things with it, I love it! Here are some of my favorite versions!
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Craig Courtney's A Musicological Journey through Christmas via the Twelve Days of Christmas. I would love to perform this...
In one 19th century version of the song, it's "my mother" that gave the gifts, not "my true love".
Straight No Chaser
The 1780 version of the song says "four colly birds". Colly means coal black.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir with The Count from Sesame Street!
In old English days, the 12 Days of Christmas was actually often played as a game. Here's a quote from Wikipedia from someone playing the game.
"Lady Gomme wrote in 1898:[42]
"The Twelve Days" was a Christmas game. It was a customary thing in a friend's house to play "The Twelve Days," or "My Lady's Lap Dog," every Twelfth Day night. The party was usually a mixed gathering of juveniles and adults, mostly relatives, and before supper — that is, before eating mince pies and twelfth cake — this game and the cushion dance were played, and the forfeits consequent upon them always cried. The company were all seated round the room. The leader of the game commenced by saying the first line. […] The lines for the "first day" of Christmas was said by each of the company in turn ; then the first "day" was repeated, with the addition of the "second" by the leader, and then this was said all round the circle in turn. This was continued until the lines for the "twelve days" were said by every player. For every mistake a forfeit — a small article belonging to the person — had to be given up. These forfeits were afterwards "cried" in the usual way, and were not returned to the owner until they had been redeemed by the penalty inflicted being performed."
In all those versions, how many different classical songs did you hear? Can you name them?
There is some debate out there about what constitutes "Classical Music". One of the biggest questions is, "Does movie music count?" It's big! It's orchestral. It seems like it should work.
Movie music is often referred to as modern classical music. My local classical radio station even has a show called The Score that is all about movie music. But it is really considered classical music?
The most compelling argument against movie music being classical is context.
Classical music is written for it's own sake. When you come to our concerts, you come expecting to hear music...and nothing else. Sometimes we put on a show (like when we played the Planets and showed you video), but mostly it's about the music.
Movie music is about what's on the screen. The music is written to enhance what you are visually enjoying. Even played in a concert hall, because of the movie, the patron comes in with preconceived ideas about what they should think about while listening. We played music from The Polar Express at our Christmas concert, and while the music is orchestral and wonderful, it's the associations with what's on the screen that gives it it's meaning.
Another way to look at it is the concept of how a musical idea is examined. In a classical piece, a musical idea will be expressed in the song, and then often composers will take that little idea, turn it on it's head, then inside out, and dance around it a bit in one movement of a piece. The most famous example of this is the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Everyone knows the first four notes.
Beethoven takes those first four notes and turns them upside down and all around, leaves them for a while, then comes back to them. You as the listener are taken on a musical ride. But there is, in Beethoven's music, no prior association (except one that you may have on your own).
So no, movie music isn't "classical music".
But it's fun, and it can be a gateway into the world of classical music. So listen guilt free and enjoy it all.
For some Christmas fun, here is the opening of the 2018 movie, The Grinch. If you are familiar with the 1960s version, you'll enjoy a lot of the musical nods wrapped into Danny Elfman's soundtrack.
I made this to go with a research paper. The quotes on the front of the pictures are superimposed on top of pictures that show the opposite of the quotes. The female conductor is Marin Alsop and the male flute player is Emmanuel Pahud.
First I got to have a blast at our annual Halloween concert.
Then I answered the door for fun trick-or-treat-ers of all ages on Halloween. I guess I'm still in the mood for goof. Here is one of my favorite silly classical music videos.
Beethoven's Fifth Sportscast!
How many musical terms can you hear in this video?
Antonin Dvorak certainly didn't. His two-note intro (which could have been where John Williams got the idea) is actually the beginning of the fourth movement of his ninth and most famous symphony, The New World (1893).
The New World Symphony is a celebration of all things America. Dvorak worked and lived in Bohemia (current day Czech Republic), but he spent 3 years in New York City as the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. He wrote this symphony while he was there. It is not only his most famous symphony but also one of the most famous symphonies in the world and the most famous work on the moon.**
Antonin Dvorak
But terror? Not really. Dvorak was inspired by Native American and African American music, and the wide-open spaces in America. He combined all those things with rhythms from his native Bohemia in what is a joyous glorification of the New World.
Prokofiev didn't really see a Mindless Eating Machine when he wrote his "Dance of the Pagan Monsters"*** from the Scythian Suite (1915), but he certainly begins to embody the terror that Williams evoked.
"Dance of the Pagan Monster"
This music was originally written for a ballet, but was rejected before is was ever performed, so Prokofiev turned it into an orchestra suite. This song was a radical departure from his earlier works. You can hear the beginnings of the heaviness that marked so many Soviet composers of the time period. Prokofiev would have lived through the Bolshevik revolution and two world wars. His music reflects that chaotic time period.
The soundtrack to Jaws jump-started John William's career. He received his second Academy Award for it, his first for "original score." Like George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg believed that the music made the movie. This soundtrack is number 6 on the list of best soundtracks.
*Say it with me. "I am a nice shark. I am not a mindless eating machine..." **Neil Armstrong took this symphony with him on the Apollo 11 mission! ***This song is crazy hard to play for us violins! I think Prokofiev was a little nuts!
He insults the troll king. Then he tries to sneak away. It doesn’t really work, and you can hear him running and the troll king chasing him.
So is the moment in the play when Peer Gynt first is accused of being a troll...but not the last. So is the moment when music immortality begins. Peer Gynt is a weird play. I’m not really sure what Henrik Ibsen* was thinking when he wrote it.
Henrik Ibsen
Peer Gynt (yes, that’s the name of the main character--it’s Norwegian) travels all over the world, gets in a lot of trouble and dies...maybe? Or is it all in his head? The play is five acts long and, honestly, doesn’t make much sense to me. I’m sure the Norwegians understood it better in 1876. I hope. Ibsen asked Edvard Grieg to compose incidental music** for the play.
Edvard Grieg (He looks Mark Twain-ish!)
Grieg did it, but it seems he didn’t enjoy it much. He wanted to make stuff up out of his head, not be forced to create things that matched a mood or a place. Even if he didn’t enjoy the process, the music he created has stood the test of time. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is the most popular of all the songs from Peer Gynt. Did it sound familiar? It should. This song is everywhere. Duke Ellington:
Inspector Gadget:
The Who:
And, in my personal favorite spin off, Trolls, the movie.
I watched the movie with my son, and when I heard the beginning of the song "Hair Up!" I started laughing. Someone*** was clever. I adore that the composers used a song originally about a guy running from a troll in a movie about trolls. Only in this movie, the song is a celebration, not an escape scene. In the world of the Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra, this song accompanies another monster/villain. Here’s a teaser for what you will see when we play "In the Hall of the Mountain King" on October 25 and 26.
Join us for our Villains and Monsters Halloween concert! Visit thetso.org for more information and tickets! *But that beard! That beard is lit! **Incidental music? Think of it as the soundtrack of the play. ***Justin Timberlake****, Max Martin, Shellback, Savan Kotecha, and Oscar Holter ****Wait, What? Justin Timberlake?***** *****Yup.
The first time I really remember resonating with this song was when The Phantom Menace (i.e. movie that must not be named #1) came out. I was in the theaters, totally pumped up, and this music started. The theater erupted in cheers. It was electric!
While George Lucas was making Star Wars: A New Hope, he had a soundtrack all figured out. He wanted a large, over-the-top score and, like Stanley Kubrick , had a whole list of classical music songs that he wanted playing in the background. But his pal, Steven Spielberg, recommended that he use this composer Spielberg had worked with on the Indiana Jones series, John Williams.
So George asked John for help, and movie magic was born.
When it comes to classical inspiration in the modern world, George and John had a huge list of composers they pulled from. In my last post I talked about “The Imperial March” and The Planets. But it wasn’t just Holst that inspired Williams.
C3PO and R2D2 are lost in the desert on Tatooine, with an eerie, haunting soundtrack that underscores their isolation.
Compare it to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring** (premiered 1913).
George Lucas considered Star Wars a space opera. While there’s not much singing in Star Wars, (here’s Harrison Ford singing a little song, if you’re curious what that would sound like), music does play a major part. Lucas himself says that Williams’ music quickly became central to the story itself: “About 90 per cent of the Star Wars films are music. It’s done in a very old-fashioned style, as silent films, so that the music kind of tells the story.” (From the Telegraph)
Next, take a listen to this clip from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet. Does it sound, in places, a little like a bunch of furry animals in the forest?
While the comparison isn’t as obvious as some of the others, you can definitely hear echoes of Prokofiev in the music for the Ewoks. Who doesn’t love the Ewoks???
One of the techniques that John Williams used is called lietmotif. This is an operatic composition technique where there is a specific musical theme for each character. The "Imperial March" is the theme for Darth Vader. If you listen to "Anakin’s Theme" in the “movies that must not be named”, you can hear that John Williams works The "Imperial March" into the theme as a musical foreshadow. Over the course of the 9 movies to date, John has composed over 50 themes to go with George’s characters.
For my last example, we have Carmina Burana.
"O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana, by Carl Orff is a little like "Sunrise" from Also Sprach Zarathustra. You’ve heard it a million times, but you may not have known what the music was. And it may have reminded you of some something. You cannot deny that "Duel of the Fates" is the best scene from the “movies that must not be named” and has the best background music to boot, and that John Williams was heavily influenced by Orff when he wrote it.
George had the idea, along with the classical music inspiration, and John created true movie magic***. The music from the Star Wars saga has arguably become the most recognized soundtrack of all time. John Williams received 26 award nominations for the work as a whole, and won 10 of those awards.
*Not the Beatles. Sorry. **Did you know there was a riot in the hall the first time The Rite of Spring was performed? It’s not just nowadays that people get offended! ***If you want to find out just how much of a difference the music makes to the movie, check out this article which has videos of the movie without the music. George wasn’t kidding when he said the music is everything.
There’s nothing quite so epic as “Mars, the Bringer of War.”
While we know that Holst came to hate The Planets for being so popular, we all know that we just can’t help ourselves when it comes to “Mars”. As one YouTube commenter said, “This Influenced about… Everything in the sci-fi music genre.”* And it’s true. The following are comments, taken directly from the video above, illustrating the influence of "Mars" (interspersed with a few random facts about Holst).
“The most brutal, metal, classical song ever written.” HeathenMetalhead221
Random Fact #1: Papa Holst wanted Gustav to play the piano and organ, and really, Gustav did do that, but he was never performance caliber. Holst had neuritis in his right arm which caused him constant pain. He picked up the trombone to help his asthma instead.
“...it seems Zimmer took some creative assistance from this beautiful body of work…,” lovewhisper68
(This one might be tricky to hear. There's speaking over the top. But, especially at the beginning, the melody of "Mars" is here, but in a different rhythm.) [There's echoes of Pirates of the Caribbean in there too, but that's another post for another day.]
Random Fact #2: Two of Holst’s other works that gained huge followings were St. Paul’s Suite--composed for the opening of a new wing at the St. Paul’s Girls School--andBrook Green Suite--a song based on one of the places he lived. Holst was a huge advocate for female music education.
“‘Attack of the Airships’ from the Super Mario Galaxy game soundtrack totally sounds like...” Lucy Deetz
Random Fact #3: Gustav Holst was what we today would lovingly term an introvert. Part of the reason that he hated the popularity of The Planets was because he hated the fame. He just wanted to compose and teach, not deal with crowds and people.
One note here. The person nominated for the most academy awards is not an actor or a director. It’s a composer. John Williams, specifically. When George Lucas asked John Williams to compose the soundtrack for the Star Wars movies, he gave him several classical pieces that he was using as filler*. The Planets was one of them. And so, in probably the most well known spin off of "Mars"...
“John Williams: can i copy your homework?
Gustav Holst: yeah but change a few things so it's not obvious
John Williams: ok” Eric Dean
This is a bonus piece: Avatar. You’ll hear echoes of Mars in the piece when the war starts.
*More on Star Wars next post! George Lucas lurved his classical music!
In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a weird movie, really. But there was this music. Epic. Thunderous. Music that makes you want to stand up and conquer! You know the music. But do you know where it came from and just how wildly popular it is? Have a listen.
“Sunrise” is the first minute and a half in a 30-minute tone poem called Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) by Richard Struass. What’s a tone poem? A piece of music that describes something. Who is Richard Strauss? A German composer born in 1864 with a unique story. He started composing when he was six. Six! His work bridged two classical music eras; the Romantic and the Modern. He was definitely the rock star of his time, but a controversial one. He died in 1949.
Richard Strauss wrote Also Sprach Zarathustra in the late 1890s, relatively early in his career. It was based on the book of the same name by Frederich Nietzsche. (I have no idea how to say that without sounding 100% ‘Murican.) His work was lush and complicated*. He really was a bit of a drama king in his compositions, from large, full-orchestra, grandiose moments to just three or four instruments playing softly.
Strauss lived in Germany through both world wars. Hitler admired the work of Strauss and pressed Strauss into working for him (as in, he nominated him for a position without Strauss even knowing). Strauss accepted the appointment to save his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandchildren, but it was a tenuous relationship at best.
Joseph Goebbels, second only to Hitler in nastiness, said of Strauss, “Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic.” The feeling was mutual. After the war was over Strauss said, “The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve-year reign of bestiality, ignorance, and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.”
These two men have attained immortality (or infamy). I like Strauss’s version of immortality better.
“Sunrise” is used three times in Kubrick's movie. You can find the opening scene here. This is the scene from the middle of the movie. Strauss gets going at about 6:15.
Like I said, weird movie. But because of it, Strauss’s song went from relative obscurity to instant fame. It’s probably more well-known than the movie is. (Also, did you listen through the whole thing? That really strange-sounding music when the monolith appears? Don’t forget that.*)
“But,” I can hear you saying, “That was 1968? It’s 2019. There’s no way that song has lasted this long?”
Rock n' Roll ü Elvis, in the late 1970s, used it to open his shows.
Pro Wrestling ü In the late 80s Ric Flair used it for his entrance video for about 5 years.
TV ü Many of the uses of Also Sprach Zarathustra are parodying 2001: A Space Odyssey. This clip is from 1991 from the beginning of a Simpsons episode titled “2001: The Homer Odyssey”.
Disney ü Pixar joined the party in Toy Story 2 (1999). Strauss shows up within the first four minutes of the movie. Pixar must have loved the song. They used it again in Wall-E with a computer that looks suspiciously like HAL.
Live Action Movies üCharlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)If you watch closely, you can see the movie playing on the TV in the background. If Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn't your thing, you can try Zoolander instead.
Commercials ü
Video Games ü
College Football ü
Today ü Phish used their version of Also Sprach Zarathustra to open their concert on September 1, 2019. The song was released in the mid 90's, but the concertgoers still love it!
*Remember the weird monolith music? Kubrick also used songs by a composer by the name of Gyorgy Ligeti. Ligeti wrote crazy atonal stuff. That strange, otherworldly-sounding music when the monolith appears is from Ligeti’s Requiem. He also wrote a piece called “Atmospheres” that Kubrick liked so much he used the whole thing in the film. Ligeti didn’t like that at all, because Kubrick didn’t get permission from him to use it. He actually sued Kubrick for using it. They settled out of court, but Kubrick happily paid the settlement. They ended up working together on two other films.
Today’s post is about Paul Dukas, a contemporary of Gustav Holst. Dukas completed a wonderful piece in 1897 that has come to change the world. I’m curious to know if Holst heard this piece before he wrote The Planets, because...well...Keep reading. I’ll explain. I grew up watching the movie Fantasia (and its sequel, Fantasia 2000). I love everything about that movie (except the Rites of Spring, sorry). The centaurs, the dancing mushrooms, a magical misfit, a dark Halloween night. Love! The first thing I thought when considering how classical music shapes our world today was a certain mouse who made his first appearance in Fantasia, and whose presence is still felt today. Here’s the story behind that piece:
What do you get when you mix an 18th-century drama king with a late 19th-century perfectionist and a 20th-century visionary?
A mouse.
The genesis of this mouse starts clear back in 1797 when this crazy popular writer, dramatist, and artist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, wrote a poem in 14 stanzas called ”Der Zauberlehrling”, which translates into “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
At the beginning of Goethe’s career, he wrote in the “Sturm und Drang” literary movement which, amongst other things, loved extreme emotion (You could call these writers the “emo” teens of the literary world). Consider these lines from the poem: “You, hell’s miscreate abortion/Is this house doomed to perdition?/Sign I see in every portion/Of impending demolition.” Our hero is practically wailing, “Is this house doomed to Hell? We’re going to be destroyed! Stop!” You can see him wallowing in despair. Luckily for Goethe, everyone back then loved his drama king tendencies. He was wildly popular (and a little [lot!] naughty, but I digress).
Moving forward 100 years. Literally.
The second player in the creation of the life of our mouse is Paul Dukas, our 19th-century perfectionist.
Paul Dukas was a classical composer in the late 1800s. He composed at least 38 pieces of music. (By way of comparison, Goethe left behind 10,000 drawings, alone!)
And destroyed a bunch of them because they weren’t perfect enough.
He ended up only allowing 14 of his 38 works to be published. His most famous work is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, a symphonic poem based on Goethe’s poem. (I know, lots of poems. A Symphonic poem is basically a piece of music that is written for a lot of instruments that tells a story.)
The reason I wonder if Holst ever heard “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is because he employed a very similar technique in “Uranus: the Magician.” Holst and Dukas seem to have the same attitude about bassoons. Bassoons at the time were considered the “clowns” of the orchestra. In both “Uranus” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, the magic is introduced by the “clowns”, the bassoons. The melodies both happen in a 1, 2, 3, skippity-skip-a-skip-a-skippity-skip-a pattern. If you turn your speakers up and listen closely at time stamps :16 and 2:30 in this video you will hear bassoon licks that sound similar so Dukas!
“Uranus, The Magician” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” also have similar structures. Each piece starts quietly, builds to a large, flamboyant climax, and then calms back down. Even at the end of Uranus, it's almost as if you can see...well...a mouse slinking away.
Dukas grew to hate “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. It was too popular. He felt it overshadowed his other works, and he was correct. To this day it is his only consistently performed work. (Sounds a bit like Holst and The Planets, don’t you think?) He died in 1935, too early to see his music brought to life on the silver screen. I’m guessing that if he is alive somewhere, he’s probably happy that he missed that event because what was already an immensely popular piece was about to become a “transcendent blessing” that would not only give his song immortality, it would permanently relegate his other works to near oblivion. It also created an icon recognizable the world over.
Enter Walter Elias Disney, a self-made man who loved animation and was always trying to push boundaries; our 20th-century visionary.
From Steamboat Willie on, Walt Disney was testing the boundaries of animation. But Walt’s beloved Mickey was waning in popularity. The Disney studios needed something to boost the Mouse back into stardom. And so, as they were finishing a “silly symphony” called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, they developed the idea for a "concert feature" and the movie Fantasia was born. Fantasia was created, in part, to give people who did not like classical music a new way to enjoy the medium. And enjoy it they did. According to filmsite.org, Fantasia ranks number 24 in the top 100 grossing movies worldwide after adjustment for inflation.
And the red-robed mouse is a major reason for that popularity. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is the most popular segment from the original Fantasia. Mickey’s star rose immediately. The show has been riffed in everything from movies to books The segment was the only part of the original that was carried over to Fantasia 2000. The curious, red-robed mouse with his blue hat covered in stars is beloved the world over.
We live in a world where Classical music is proclaimed remote, inaccessible, and not relevant to current society. But that’s really not the case. Classical music is everywhere in the world that you and I live in. Take this mouse. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” Mickey is the second most iconic Mickey look. He stars in the show Fantasmic that runs in Disneyland today. He is used in television shows and video games. Around the world, Mickey has become a symbol of imagination and creativity.
A 19th-century perfectionist wrote an amazing piece of music based on an 18th-century drama king’s poem. A 20th-century visionary took that song and gave it a face. And now, here, in the 21st century, because of those men and that piece of classical music, we have an icon.
