December 23, 2022

Christmas Music

28 minutes

Ivan Wise discusses Christmas music that should be better known.

Christmas is our most sturdily conservative tradition, and this December you will hear once again the same music that you have heard every other Christmas. The usual suspects dominate playlists in shopping malls, on radio stations and at parties. But how did we end up with this apparently immovable canon of Christmas songs? And what other Christmas music is out there that we should be listening to instead? George Ratcliffe Woodward, lyricist of Ding Dong Merrily on High, gets a rap makeover, Nikolai Gogol’s short story Christmas Eve inspired operas by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Tom Lehrer arrives to throw some cynical scorn over the Christmas schmaltz.

Past Three O’Clock https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/past_three_a_clock.htm

A Night in Bethlehem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=047wQ3vgFos

Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxJRmhiOx80

December - Tchaikovsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRtTRUz6XA

Vakula the Smith - Tchaikovsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC5GQdslXmw

Christmas Eve – Rimsky-Korsakov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpJmUBkXyM

Weihnachtsbaum – Franz Lizst https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56v4vlGUPxA

March of the gnomes – Vladimir Rebikov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmvDaclogK4

Werther – Jules Massenet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9LQi1BBF2c

A Christmas Song – Tom Lehrer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZR3lJobjw

Christmas Presents in Heaven – Solomon Burke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0DUCV-09RI

Second Christmas Concerto - Michele Corette https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9yygcNIIWI

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By Ivan Wise

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