Christmas music (19)--Best 20th century choral Christmas music albums

There isn’t just one, so I’m suggesting a bunch here. The first two come from the English Group Polyphony, with two albums called O magnum misterium (note the middle English spelling) and A Christmas Present from Polyphony. You would never know what a wasteland much of 20th century composing was from listening to these albums. Maybe there is something to the notion that all great music is, at some level, religious music. Certainly, many of the century's greatest composers--Poulenc, Messianen, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Copland--were deeply religious. That's as far as I'll go. This album is mostly British composers, notably Howells, who wrote some great stuff. It doesn't have the four wonderfully meditative Poulenc Christmas Motets, that we discussed a couple of posts ago, but you can't have everything. But you can find that on an album called Child of Light by the Elysian Singers, yet another album of 20th century Christmas music by yet another fine English choral group, which also has a very nice version of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols.

There have been hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Christmas works composed over the past century, and many of them are noteworthy in some respect. I don’t know for sure, but it certainly seems as if the vast majority of them are from England. This may be because a number of major English—or British, rather, if we include Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh in the mix—composers took, and still take, Christmas seriously. There are multiple reasons for this—the long musical history of the country, the adaptation of so many English pagan and folk customs to the Christmas ceremony, and the fact that the English made serious efforts to start popularizing Christmas carols in the 19th century. The English had had a vigorous carol tradition prior to the ban on Christmas celebrations and church music by the Puritans in the 17th century, and many carols and songs were lost. This carol tradition did not resume in earnest until the publication in the early 19th century of various editions of carols—and the Victorians, with their love of ceremony, embraced the carol tradition as if it had never disappeared in the first place.

A further reason, certainly, has to be the influence of the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was the first major English composer to take folk songs seriously. In fact, Vaughan Williams was a diligent collector of folk songs, and much of his collection found its way into his symphonic and choral output. Vaughan Williams had a significant influence on subsequent generations of English composers, particularly from his teaching position at the Royal College of Music. Vaughan Williams is perhaps best known for his Fantasia on Christmas Carols (written when he was 81!), but he also has a magnificent Christmas Cantata (Hodie) to his credit, as well as any number of arrangements of traditional carols.

The title piece of one of the first Polyphony album above, ironically, is often associated with the American composer Morton Lauridsen. Lauridsen’s O magnum mysterium is one of the most glorious choral pieces of the 20th century, and is available on any number of albums—but not this one. The reason I like this album is its broad representation of English composers, particularly from the first half of the 20th century, when composers of Christmas music were flourishing—William Walton, Herbert Howells, Peter Warlock and Kenneth Leighton are all well-represented on this album. In addition, Stephen Layton, Polyphony’s musical director, does something that I don’t think is done enough, even on Christmas albums, which is to try to recreate a concert. So in this case, the sequence of 20th centuries carols and songs is bracketed by Sarum chant—a form of monophonic chant associated with the Sarum rite used in English churches from the 13th century until the Reformation. There are a number of gems on this album—Howells’ A spotless Rose and Sing Lullaby (both of which I sang last year!), several pieces from Peter Warlock (including I Saw a Fair Maiden, which alone would justify Warlock’s fame), Leighton’s Lully, Lulla, thou little tiny child, and Walton’s What Cheer—one of the most delightful and joyful Christmas songs ever written. And Peter Warlock’s Bethlehem Down, with lyrics from poet Basil Blunt.

The story of the composition of this piece is so good it should be apocryphal, but isn’t. But it has become legendary anyway. Warlock and Blunt, who shared a house together in the English village of Eynsford, in Kent, for a while when both were constantly broke, and in need of funds for their patronage of the local pub. So wandering home in a bit of a haze one evening, across the downs, Blunt came up with the lyrics. The next morning, Warlock, who was an early riser, saw what Blunt had produced and immediately set it to music. They then sent it off to The Daily Telegraph as an entrant to the carol competition the Telegraph was running that year, and won, which kept them in funds for the next bout of carousing, including, according to Blunt, an “immortal carouse” on Christmas eve in 1927. It is astonishing, still, to think that a piece of such delicacy and beauty can come from a bender, but there it is. The lyrics themselves are stunning, given the source:

"When he is King we will give him the Kings’ gifts,
Myrrh for its sweetness, and gold for a crown,
Beautiful robes,” said the young girl to Joseph,
Fair with her first-born on Bethlehem Down.

Bethlehem Down is full of the starlight —
Winds for the spices, and stars for the gold,
Mary for sleep, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

When he is King they will clothe him in grave-sheets,
Myrrh for embalming, and wood for a crown,
He that lies now in the white arms of Mary,
Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.

Here he has peace and a short while for dreaming,
Close-huddled oxen to keep him from cold,
Mary for love, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

A Christmas Present from Polyphony is a bit more current in its scope, although, again, it has significant pieces from Howells, Walton, Britten and Warlock—there is some overlap with O magnum mysterium, in fact. In addition to the Lauridsen, it also has Bethlehem Down, Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin, written when Britten was sixteen (!), and several other notable works. This album isn’t just English—there are several works from Estonian composer Arvo Pärt—O Morgenstern and Magnificat—which are breathtaking.

The two Christmas albums put out by Ex Cathedra have a lot of overlap with the two Polyphony albums. Sir Christemas (or Christmas Past & Present, depending on which edition you want) isn’t just 20th century music, and it isn’t just English composers—but it has enough spectacular 20th century pieces to warrant attention anyway. These include No Small Wonder by contemporary English composer Paul Edwards, John Tavener’s The Lamb (with words from Blake), and the Harold Darke arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter, which most Americans will be unfamiliar with. But a better bet is Christmas Music by Candlelight, which is all either 20th century compositions, or 20th century arrangements of earlier works. And the list of composers here is prodigious: Holst, Lauridsen (again!—he’s everywhere), Roderick Williams, the American composers Samuel Barber and Sydney Carter, Bethlehem Down again, and others. A stunning album.

The Sixteen also has an album of 20th century Christmas music which has many of these same chestnuts—Walton, Leighton, Britten, Tavener, Warlock, Howells—in fact, many of these same songs. There’s a reason for this, and I can vouch for it having been a member of an English choral group the past five years—not only are these lovely or stirring works to hear, they’re also a joy to perform. Which is why singers don’t get tired of singing them. The Sixteen album, called A Twentieth Century Christmas Collection (reissued as Hodie—An English Christmas Collection) also contains a very dramatic version of O magnum mysterium by the British composer Peter Maxwell Davies that will knock your socks off, including the 11-minute organ fantasia that closes the piece. There’s also a lovely carol by the little-known English composer Edmund Rubbra, which you probably won’t find anywhere else. Any album put out by The Sixteen is worth owning.

Two albums from local London choruses are also worth a mention. The first, Child of Light by the Elysian Singers, was mentioned above, and it’s worth tracking down. It has one of the best versions of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols that I know of, all four Poulenc Christmas motets, and a fair mix of other English composers, including Maxwell Davies, Tavener, and Leighton. It also has a stirring version of Judith Weir’s Illuminare, Jerusalem, which proves that modern choral composing can be both interesting and listenable. And Weir does something here that should be familiar—setting a 15th century text in a modern dramatic context. The Elysian Singers have a genuine affinity for late 20th century choral works, and there are several on this album in addition to the piece by Weir, yet another contemporary composer who takes Christmas seriously. The second is from the Vasari Singers, Noel Nouvelet, which isn’t strictly just 20th century works—we start out with Mendelssohn’s Weihnachten, for example. But there are enough 20th century choral works to justify thinking of it as a 20th century album bracketed by some older stuff. We have yet another Lauridsen magnum (you really can’t have too many), the Weir Illuminare, Leighton’s Coventry Carol, Edward’s No Small Wonder, along with works by lesser-known or contemporary composers such as Jonathan Rathbone and Michael Head. Again, a delightful presentation of some of the best 20th century English Christmas songs. And it’s available! I would be remiss if I did not also mention the good old City Chamber Choir’s Christmas album, culled from live performances over the past decade, available from the CCC website.

So there are a raft of English 20th century works, and a profusion of albums on which you can find them. It would be nice to say that there is a comparable depth to modern American Christmas music as we find in England (or Germany, or Sweden, for that matter). But there isn’t. There is that great Tin Pan Alley tradition, of course, which gave us White Christmas, The Christmas Song, and, perhaps most importantly, Frosty the Snowman. But nothing striking from any American composer comes to mind here—aside from Lauridsen, and while he may be the best choral composer in modern America, he’s hardly a household name. Samuel Barber wrote some Christmas pieces. Sydney Carter composed the wonderful Every Star Shall Sing a Carol. Randall Thompson's Allelujia is often performed this time of year, but it's not even really a Christmas work. Daniel Pinkham wrote a glorious Christmas Cantata, which does indeed show up on any number of albums, but it used to show up on more. The Boston Camerata, as discussed earlier, have a glorious American Christmas album, but this is early American Christmas music, of which, ironically, there is no shortage. Peter Schickele, in his non-PDQ Bach persona, has actually written some lovely Christmas pieces (some of which I sang years ago), but it doesn’t appear as if any are currently available. What there is will invariably show up on one of the Christmas albums put out by the estimable Dale Warland Singers, thankfully—but compared to England (or most European countries, for that matter), America has produced surprisingly little serious Christmas music over the past century. Bleak midwinter indeed.

Christmas music (18)–Best “New Age” Christmas album, but it isn’t, really

God knows I hate the fact that I even have to consider this a category. But there it is. Every year brings out a reprise of that awful Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album, or the next umpteenth installment of the Windham Hill Christmas series. The early Windham Hill ones were ok, I admit, particularly the second one, but please, enough is enough. And then there are those other labels, which just noodle on and on, without even bothering to check to see if any of their recording artists actually know how to play. Fortunately, there’s one that rises above the pack, because it isn’t really “New Age” at all. It’s a straight up jazz album by an artist, Liz Story, who somehow has never been able to overcome the fact that she got typecast into this particular section of the record store. It’s called The Gift, and it’s great. Solo piano, and her interpretations are flawless. My favorite cut is her version of What Child is This? But all the cuts are great, and you’ll keep going back to it. It’s hypnotic.

I guess I tend to think of New Age as kind of a 1980s phenomenon. That’s when Wyndham Hill started putting out albums by an interesting group of people—Liz Story, Michael Hedges, Shadowfax, William Ackerman (who founded the label), and others. It was a refreshing change from the awful corporate rock of the 1980s, and the fact that jazz seemed to be stuck in something of a rut. And I seem to recall Philip Glass being hailed as a genius about this time as well. So what was not to like about some straight up, simple guitar or piano, with knowledgeable improvisation often thrown in? But “refreshing” often has a habit of become “stale,” and that’s what happened here, especially when “New Age” hooked up, inevitably, with “Celtic,” and when “endless” George Winston started sounding like “interminable” George Winston.

Story is another category entirely. It’s jazz, yes, but in a very classical context, which is not at all surprising, since she initially trained to become a classical musician. It’s our good fortune, and classical music’s loss, that she changed directions. I like all her albums, but this one tends to stand out for me, because it’s the only one that I play regularly. It’s on right now, in fact.

And if you want something a bit more up-tempo, from back in the days when there was no confusion what category a particular kind of music was, there’s the good old Ramsey Lewis Sound of Christmas, which is still available as well. And we’ve already covered Vince Guaraldi. Sadly, my favorite jazz pianist, Ahmad Jamal, has never done a Christmas album, but he does have a wonderful piece called Snowfall that shows up on something called Traditional Jazz Christmas, where Jamal is surrounded by better known jazz artists like Louis Armstrong, Mel Torme and Peggy Lee, but also by Lewis and Kenny Burrell, so it’s a real mix. Discontinued, of course, but you can still track it down. Sort of a historical artifact, except for the contributions of Jamal and Lewis. If you like this sort of thing, Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas is a similar kind of product, but with a better line-up, including Roland Kirk and Jimmy Smith, with some wonderful vocals from Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington. And this one is actually available. Both of these albums are a mix, of course–not just piano.

Christmas music (17)–Themes and Variations

We all know that many modern Christmas carols and songs derive from earlier versions. Musical history is full of these little evolutions. Some of our favorite carols turn out to be something that someone was singing 400 or 500 years ago, and that’s pretty cool, actually. Good Christian Men, Rejoice, for example, derives in a pretty straight line from In Dulci Jubilo, which first appeared on the scene, so far as anyone can tell, in 1328, written by a German mystic monk named Heinrich Seuse. And composers ever since then have taken this theme and reworked it in interesting ways. There were, in fact, multiple Renaissance versions—but this is what Renaissance composers specialized in, trying to one-up each other (that’s why we have something like 35 Armed Man Masses). But I sang a dramatic version of this by Robert Pearsall just last year, in fact. Pearsall was a 19th century English-German composer who worked hard to revitalize plainsong and Renaissance polyphony. A good song is hard to keep down. And occasionally we find albums that highlight some of these developments.

In addition to the well-known version most frequently associated with the German Renaissance composer Michael Praetorius, versions of the theme—or the outright song—were used by Buxtehude, Bach, and Liszt. And, of course, at some point someone turned it into Good Christian Men, Rejoice, a bang-up version of which you can find on Gabriel’s Message—One Thousand Years of Carols, a collection of 20th century arrangements of traditional carols by a variety of English chorales, to be found on Naxos records

Occasionally a group will provide multiple versions of the same song, in part to show how it differed over a period of time. So in the case of In Dulci Jubilo, we can profusely thank the extraordinary Pomerium, a New York based early music choral group, who have produced an astonishingly beautiful Christmas album Creator of the Stars (which was also issued as Old World Christmas) on Archiv, and of course it’s out of print even though I bought it only two years ago. On this album, we hear a very early version of the earliest In Dulci Jubilo, from the Piae Cantiones, a manuscript of medieval Latin music initially published in 1582 in what is now Germany, but was then part of Swedish territory, and which further seems to have a substantial contribution from what is now Finland as well. We then hear three different versions from Praetorius, for two, three, and four voices, respectively. Praetorius explores some interesting polyphonic possibilities to create a wonderful musical tapestry, and we can see how the theme lends itself to these sorts of creative variations by composers. The modern Pearsall version discussed above makes for a dramatic contrast to the Praetorius compositions—whereas the latter are almost ethereal in their sound, the kind of sound Renaissance composers strove to achieve for the cathedrals their works were designed to be performed in, the Pearsall composition is loud, bossy and emphatic. Someone should put this entire sequence on one album. Of course, someone should re-issue this album too. The Pomerium album, by the way, replicates this theme and variations pattern for a number of other works, mostly medieval or early Renaissance in origin, although most of these will be unfamiliar to most modern listeners.

Other medieval songs may be more familiar, however. O magnum mysterium, which began as a responsorial chant for the Christmas Mass, may not show up on everyone’s list of favorite carols, but is such a beautiful theme that it has been reworked by any number of composers over the centuries, ranging from the Spanish composer Tomás de Victoria in the late 16th centuries to the English composer William Byrd in 1607, through modern composers such as Francois Poulenc and, more recently, the American composer Morten Lauridsen (who is still with us). In fact, it’s been a hugely popular 20th century work for any number of composers, and we’ll discuss it further when we get to 20th century Christmas music. But it also fits the theme and variations concept wonderfully.

As do Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour le temps de noël, one of which is, indeed, O magnum mysterium. Poulenc, about whom we shall have more to say in a future post, set these in the minimalist style that characterized much of his work, but they clearly have medieval roots–and reflect Poulenc’s strong return to his Catholic faith. In fact, all four motets (O magnum mysterium, Quem vidistis pastores dicite, Videntes stellam, and Hodie Christus natus est) are medieval or early Renaissance in origin, and, like O magnum mysterium discussed above, have been stretched and reworked over the centuries. Poulenc’s stretching is some of the most interesting to have occurred to medieval themes, and are clearly of this century. But like Britten, with whom Poulenc was close friends, the fascination with the medieval became an important part of his musical life. This work shows up everywhere—not just on Christmas albums, but on all sorts of Poulenc choral albums as well. This is one you will have no trouble tracking down.

Then there’s perhaps the most lovely extended set of variations, those associated with Es ist ein Ros Entsprungen, which we probably know as Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming. I would also be remiss if I failed to mention the two-disc set from the Thomanerchor Leipzig (founded in 1212!), called Weihnachten. Although I should also note that it’s not just medieval—there are more recent German carols and Christmas songs as well. And this one is actually still available through Amazon, and I assume other venues as well. Such a rare occurrence. Among other gems is an 11-minute arrangement of Michael Praetorius’s Es ist ein Ros Ersprungen. Actually, it’s not originally by Praetorius—we don’t know who composed it originally—it appears anonymously in a Hymnal in 1599 ten years before the first arrangement by Praetorius first appears, in 1609. Brahms later used the theme in an organ piece. But the one of interest to us here are the variations are by a 20th century German composer, Hugo Distler, from a piece he composed in 1933 called Weihnachtenshistorie (The Christmas Story), which I actually sang about fifteen years ago. A treat. Distler was a wonderful composer who killed hiself rather than be conscripted by the Wehrmacht, leaving us at the age of 34. Distler is one of those artists that I think about in terms of what their early departure deprived us of. It’s pure selfishness on my part, I know, but still, I think about, in Distler’s case, the extraordinary music we shall never hear. The Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, who died at 32, and the Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio, who died at 27, evoke a similar sadness.

Weihnachtenshistorie is a series of solos and choral pieces retelling the Christmas Story. The entire piece is interspersed with a series of variations on Praetorius’ original arrangement, and it’s one of my absolute favorite Christmas pieces. The version I have was picked up in Germany, but I notice that Amazon seems to carry a number of their albums, and many are Christmas albums—and last time I checked, they have this one as well. It also shows up on one of the Chanticleer Christmas albums, the one with Dawn Upshaw, since there’s a lovely bit with a soprano solo and the chorus behind her. Actually, I prefer the Thomanerchor version—I think Chanticleer take the piece much too slowly.

See, this is what you can do when your collection gets out of hand—you justify it by saying you want to compare multiple version of the same work. Neat.

Christmas music (16)–Best Christmas Oratorio

Big surprise, I’m going with Bach rather than Handel in this category. He seems like the obvious choice, and in this case you can’t argue with it–the opening alone is one of the most joyous bits of music ever written, and the whole piece is stunning. Owning this work is not discretionary. You’d have to include Handel’s Messiah in this group as well (which people seem to normally trot out at Easter, even though it was written as a Christmas work), and a bunch of the works of Heinrich Schütz, who studied with Monteverdi, and wrote a whole gaggle of lovely late Renaissance pieces, ranging from individual songs to entire concertos, and who has several striking Christmas pieces, including an oratorio. But Bach, who also wrote a whole slew of Christmas cantatas and other Christmas pieces, pulled out the stops on this one. My favorite version is the one on on EMI classics, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the fields, the Kings College choir, and a bunch of hotshot soloists who actually blend well together, for a change– Elly Ameling, Janet Baker, Robert Tear, and Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. But of course it’s no longer available, although you can still track them down through Amazon. Ameling in particular is amazing. She also did a wonderful Christmas album about 20 years ago with Thijs van Leer, who was (and still is) with the rock group Focus. This album, obviously, is also out of print, since I’m recommending it.

The other version that I listen to regularly is the one from the Dresdner Kammerchor, which is one of my favorite choral groups, this time backed by the Dresdner Barokorchester, with a group of soloists that you are unlikely to be familiar with. A very lively version. Amazon will tell you that it has been discontinued by the manufacturer, but that’s not true–you can order it from Raumklang Records in Germany. Raumklang is one of my favorite labels–I order stuff from them regularly, and they deliver pronto.

If you don’t want to get that ambitious, and want to stick with something like Amazon, there are a couple of versions that you can’t really go wrong with. At the top of the list would be the versions by John Eliot Gardner, recorded in 1987 with Anne Sofie von Otter, or the version by Nicolas Harnoncourt, a recent update of the version he first recorded in 1973. The Rene Jacobs version is also worth a listen, although Jacobs’ interpretations of Bach are not to everyone’s taste.

Much is often made of the fact that Bach had seventeen children (twenty, actually, but three died while young). Remarkably, the people who feel compelled to note this rarely bring in the two Mrs. Bachs, the second of whom bore thirteen, all of whom grew up. This was while Bach himself was mostly (although not completely, obviously) hanging out at whatever cathedral he was working at, mostly in Leipzig. Whew! If there’s a medal to be awarded here, it goes to her.

In fact, I recently finished a good short biography of Bach by Martin Geck. I didn’t know Bach was a jailbird. It turns out that in Germany (or whatever it was called) at the time, court or municipal musicians couldn’t break their contracts, and if they tried to, they got thrown in jail. Bach wanted to break his contract in Weimar–so he got thrown in jail. He won, though. It also turns out that one of the folk mythologies about Bach that I had believed–that The Art of the Fugue was one of his last works–turns out to be false. It was something he had worked on for years, but remained unfinished at the time of Bach’s death. It was, however, rushed into print by his sons, so that’s probably how the myth developed. However, it is true that Bach meant it to be the summation of his view of composing.

When we were in Leipzig a couple of years ago we had a chance to visit the Bach Museum, which is the house that Bach lived in during his stay there. It was pretty neat, and I got one of those t-shirts that shrinks immediately, so I haven’t been able to wear it much. Leipzig is a hotbed of early music performance, if such a thing can be said to exist—it has spawned both Ioculatores and Ensemble Amarcord, along with many less well known groups.

Christmas music (15)–Best German Medieval Christmas album

Ah, finally. Medieval Christmas music is by far my favorite category, since this is what I listen to most of the time. Being in London helps, because whenever I used to go on a business trip to Frankfurt or Munich I would hit the record shops, and Germans tend to go a little gaga at Christmas anyway. I usually try to get there in December to hit the Christmas markets, but wasn’t able to this year, sadly. Anyway, there are dozens and dozens to choose from. Picking from the ones that I own alone is tricky. But the past several years (if my iPod table of music listened to is any indication), what I have been listening to most is a simply wonderful disc from a group called Ioculatores, called Fro Fro. Just magic. They have several other albums out as well, all from Raumklang records, and all worth acquiring if you’re interested in medieval music. If I had to reduce my collection to just one Christmas album, this would be the one. It captures the magic and mystery of Christmas more elegantly than any other album I can think of, although there are many that come close. Again, there is little on this album that a modern American listener would associate with Christmas—but that’s the point.

I don’t know why Germans do Christmas so well, but they do. For one thing, they have the best Christmas markets in Europe. The start popping up the last week in November, and go through Christmas Eve. Hundreds of little booths, all lined up in the squares. Some are only ok, like the one in Cologne (lots of Nokia phone covers, as Mrs. W pointed out), but some are fantastic, like the ones in Nuremberg and in Munich, which we have been to a couple of times. It’s really nice–whole families wandering around together, which is what families in Europe do, I’ve noticed–this is a continent where teenagers go visit their grandparents on Sundays. Everyone drinks something called Gluwein, which isn’t really wine, but does do a really good job of keeping you nice and warm, and eats stollen and Lebkuchen, which is stuff I grew up with. And you can get some nice little things for Christmas–hand-made metal ornaments, or these weird little prune dolls, which, to our amazement and increasing concern, lasted for years.

The other thing Germans do really, really well is Christmas music. Not just the big-name stuff, from Praetorius and Schütz and Bach onwards. Everywhere has traditional carols and songs. It’s just that Germany has so many more of them than most other countries, possibly except England, and so many of them are just the prettiest songs you can hear, or sing, at Christmas. And many of our carols come from Germany, although we might not know it. It’s often a shock for people to realize that a carol they’ve sung for their whole life actually comes from something written by some monk 600 years previously.

Germany has been, for a number of years, the most interesting country in Europe. Partly its interesting history, and partly how it’s still dealing with that history. This is now entering a new phase, and it will interesting to see how it turns out. It has mainly been driven from the publication of two books several years ago, one by the late WG Sebald (who lived here in England, and tragically died about seven years ago in a car accident), and one by Gunther Grass. Sebald’s book, The Natural History of Destruction, is actually several short essays, and one long piece (from which the book gets its title) on the bombing of Dresden. And I learned some things that I hadn’t learned from Slaughterhouse Five, which is where most of us got whatever knowledge we have of this event–the lovely old medieval city, firebombed in one of the worst allied bombings of the war. What I hadn’t known then, but I do now, is that not only had the Germans withdrawn nearly all of their troops from the city at that point (a fact known to the Allies), but also that Dresden had become a major refugee center for Germans (and others) fleeing the Russian advances from the East–a fact also known to the Allies at the time of the bombing. Grass’s book is called Crabwalk, and is a novel based on a true event–the sinking of a German hospital ship that was used as a refugee carrier towards the end of the war. It was sunk by a Russian submarine in 1945, and over 9000 people died. This was the largest maritime disaster in history, and no one knew about it until recently.

The issues Sebald and Grass raise are interesting, and their major point is really a question that has rarely been asked in Germany during the past almost sixty years–are Germans allowed to grieve for their innocents? They’ve done guilt for this entire period (as opposed to, say, Japan), of course, but this is a new debate entirely. Were there innocent Germans? Well, children certainly, and a whole lot of them died in these two incidents. There are probably a whole lot of complicated issues in answering these questions, and I’m glad I don’t have to. But Sebald and Grass ask a more fundamental question–why has no one at all raised this question in the first place during the past six decades? And isn’t it about time someone did?

We’ve spent a fair amount of time in Germany in recent years, mainly in what we call, for lack of a better term, old east Germany. Actually, Saxony-Anhalt, which is mostly flat agricultural land, although it also include the Hartz Mountains. This is about as off the beaten track as you can get in modern Europe, and it’s a bit weird that we’ve done this—and it traces from the fact that Ioculatores runs an annual early music festival called Montalbâne in a little town called Freyburg an der Unstrut. The first time we went we were driving up from Regensburg, a comfortable small city not too far from Munich. The first stop was Weimar, and it was fantastic. Literally. We pull into town, find a hotel, stash our stuff, and then start wandering around—it’s a nice balmy summer evening, and everything in this part of Europe is farther north, so it stays light later than it does in American cities—something we love. Look, there’s a piano on the corner over there, with someone playing it. Hey, some lute players. Goodness, there’s someone playing an instrument on every corner. Jugglers. Face painting. And everyone in the town is wandering around in a pretty cheerful mood. Ah, the solstice celebration, when music literally fills the air. Well, that certainly was a pleasant surprise. Weimar deserves a post on its own, and we’re going to try to get back—it was a European City of Culture in 1999. This entails receiving a bunch of money from the EU to spruce yourself up and get people to come and enjoy what you have to offer. And Weimar, the intellectual heart of Germany (for better and for worse), offers quite a lot.

Then on to Montalbâne. But we haven’t been able to find a room in Freyburg, so we’re staying in the nearest larger town, Naumberg. Which clearly has never seen an American visitor. So the hotel people keep staring at us in astonishment, asking if everything is ok, solicitous as can be. And of course it’s fine. In fact, it’s better than fine—it’s interesting. For one thing, the World Cup is going on right here in German, but you would never know it. There’s a long story here, but the short take is that old east Germany (as we’ll continue to call it) is manifestly uninterested in what’s going in the World Cup—the world’s largest and most important sporting event, which is being held in Germany that very year, and where Germany is one of the few teams actually favored to win (they didn’t, being eliminated in an exciting semifinal by eventual winner Italy). The only two old east German cities that even bothered to bid on venues were Berlin and Leipzig—others didn’t even bother. It turns out that one of the lingering areas of bitterness in old East Germany is over football—after the reunification, one of the first things that happened was the rich old West German football clubs came in and bought all the excellent but underpaid very good players from old East Germany—and a number of old east German teams collapsed as a result.

Then we noticed that, unlike practically everywhere else we’ve been in Germany (or Europe, for that matter) practically no one over the age of 30 spoke any English. Now, this is an entire continent, we thought, where everyone has learned at least some English—it is the language of business in most countries, and is certainly the language of tourism. But of course we weren’t aware of two things at that point, although we learned them pretty quickly. First, there’s not much tourism where we’re hanging out. (We were, I think, the only native English speakers in the audience at the music festival) And second, everyone’s second language is Russian. Ah. And it’s true—in large blocs of eastern Europe, everyone learned Russian as their second language. It was often required in schools, in fact. So we’d see these elderly people on the street, conversing in Russian. And we’d think about the cognitive dissonance these people have experienced over the years. What lives some of these people have lived.

There was another aspect of old east Germany that was interesting as well. It was brought home by the hotel we were staying at, which had recently been spruced up. And in this case, it meant that all the built-in furniture in the room had been rebuilt. And it was, literally. As opposed to some of the places we had recently stayed at in Germany or Austria, where a refurbishment basically meant bringing in a new batch of Ikea stuff. Here it meant some guy coming in and rebuilding everything in the style stuff had been built in for generations—out of wood, with the attendant craftsmanship of the traditional builder. This meant drawers that actually opened and closed, dovetail joints where appropriate—in fact, superb joinery throughout—and a general level of craftsmanship that you virtually never see in a hotel or inn in the west. This was not only refreshing—it was so surprising I had to think about it. Part of it, I think, is that the reunification has not gone completely successfully—there is still high unemployment in large parts of old East Germany, including this area we were staying in. But it also reflects that fact that this is a culture where doing things this way still comes naturally, perhaps even more so than even old West Germany. And we’d drive around, and while it’s not an affluent area by any means, it still looks pretty sturdy.

And it happened that Naumberg has holding its Hussite-Cherry Festival, which is an annual event, and which dates back to the 16th century. Which was kind of a hoot. First of all, for being the Hussite-Cherry Festival in the first place. It derives from a pleasant but fictitious tale of how the local schoolteacher prevented the besieging Hussite forces from sacking the town, and it’s a really nice festival. It’s the peak of cherry season, for starters. And we were able to wander around a bunch of tents with people dressed in medieval costumes and eat lot of cherries. And it was great—every teenager in town appeared to be in some musical group standing around singing some old medieval German song. Now, I assume they don’t do this all the time. But the fact that they were doing it at all was pretty impressive.


The inside is cool, too.

We are constantly surprised by this area. The last time we visited, we spent a lot of time in a little medieval town called Quedlinburg, which has one of the most amazing cathedrals we’ve ever seen, especially in terms of the carvings. And a castle. In fact, the area is so medievally pristine that it’s a Unesco World Heritage Site—some of the half-timber housing dates to the 14th century. And also, to our utter surprise, a museum devoted to the works of Lyonel Feininger, the 20th century German artist who grew up in the US, but lived in Germany for much of his life before returning to the US in 1933. It’s here because a major collector of Feininger’s work lived here—Feininger has no direct connection to the place. Who cares? It was a delight to find it. That’s what’s great about living in and traveling around Europe—the constant surprises. Like the new museum in the next town over, Halberstadt, where the cathedral, magnificent in its own right, has one of the best medieval museums we’ve ever come across, with a magnificent collection of the earliest tapestries in Europe.

Just as I am constantly surprised by the music that I find. I am constantly amazed at the range and depth of music written for Christmas over the centuries, and the amount of music from medieval times is prodigious. Before I started listening to Fro Fro incessantly , my favorite medieval German album was the previously mentioned In Natali Domini, from the Niederaltaicher Scholaren, which is sadly no longer available, but does show up from time to time on Amazon. A collection of short songs, sung monophonically, so they sound like short sparky chants, all with a Christmas theme. Let me also mention two albums by the choral group Amarcord, mainly because I know they’re still available, if only from the label itself, Raumklang, in Germany, and these days you never know how long something will be available for. The first, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, is medieval (and renaissance) German stuff, which grew out of a series of Christmas concerts the group gave in Leipzig, an early music haven if there ever was one. It’s just lovely. Amarcord is five male singers, but you wouldn’t know it. The second is more of a Christmas Around the World type of thing called In Adventu Domini, but it has a fair number of medieval German stuff on it that you won’t find anywhere else, so it’s worth a look. But Fro Fro is the one to have.

Christmas music (14)–Best Christmas album by a European medieval babe group

This would be Eya Pueri, by Discantus. Discantus is a French medieval babe group, and the only difference between them and Anonymous 4 is that there are more of them–eight singers, as compared with four. Same era, though, mostly songs from before the 15th century. And while they have toured the US and the rest of Europe, they still haven’t toured anywhere in the UK. But I’m hoping. The group was founded by Brigitte Lesne, who is involved in some other excellent French early music groups as well, particularly Alla Francesca, which is a mixed group, but sadly does not appear to have done a Christmas album yet.

European Medieval Babe groups are becoming quite the thing. There are several Scandinavian ones, especially Trio Medieval, who have several lovely albums out on ECM, and who we just saw in concert last week--wonderful. There’s Zorgina, from Italy. Canty is from Ireland. There are a number of mixed groups that are led by women, including the wonderful Joglaresa right here in England, whose own album of Medieval Italian Christmas music will get discussed in a later post. And then, inevitably, there’s an English group that actually calls themselves The Medieval Babes. Wait, it’s actually worse than that—it was originally the Medieval Baebes, which mercifully got dropped. Early music purists were horrified by the apparently unique combination of medieval chant, whole lots of cleavage and the size of the record contract, although one might infer that the last two items on this list were not unconnected. The only problem is that they’re only ok, and that’s about it—perfectly serviceable voices, but absolutely no sense of modulation, for example. Discantus, on the other hand, like some of the other groups just mentioned, is enchanting.

Considering the damage it has suffered over the centuries, France still has a surprising amount of medieval towns around, and they are just lovely to walk around. Mostly walled cities that have long since overgrown their walled boundaries, they still often have medieval centers full of dark little lanes and weirdly-shaped doors, and exposed beams everywhere. Many English towns are like this as well, except England hasn’t been overrun by foreign troops since 1066, and France, like much of the rest of Europe, has spent much of the past millennium watching troops move around the place at pretty regular intervals. It’s amazing anything is left.

When we moved here in 1998 we thought we’d be spending a lot of time in France–it’s right across the channel, and easy to get to. Actually, it hasn’t worked out that way, since the business traveling that I did was mostly to cities, which meant we get to Paris regularly, but not much else. In fact, we’ve probably spent more time in Italy and Germany than anywhere else. So a couple of years ago, on the 4th of July, we did what most self-respecting Americans living here did–we went to France, and had a lovely time. We rented a car and drove around the Somme valley, touring the WWI battlefields–what carnage–and some old paleolithic sites, and a fantastic bird sanctuary, and eating very well. Not to mention the cathedrals, which I am really getting into–and Amiens has one of the great mazes. And the Picardi National Museum in Amiens was a complete delight–a genuine surprise, with a world class medieval collection.

More recently, we spent a couple of weeks in the Dordogne. This is a very English thing to do, as it turns out—there are English people everywhere, so much so that it gets a little dispiriting. And they’re all either kayaking (they call it “canoeing”) on the rivers, or clogging the restaurants. And the reason for it, I suppose, is that it’s kind of a boring area, really—there’s not much to do except for kayaking the rather slow rivers, or touring some castles and villas, or eating phenomenally well, or—and this is the fun part—hitting the caves. This is where Lascaux is, and there’s been so much traffic there that they had to close the real cave. What you go through instead is a recreation of the high points of the original cave. I have to say, it’s still absolutely startling to see the artwork created thousands of years before there was any physical settlement that has endured. And it’s not just Lascaux, although that’s certainly the best known of the Paleolithic sites. There are a number of other sites in the area that are equally interesting, especially Rouffignac, where you take a train into the cave, and the cave itself is full of pictures of mammoths, hundreds and hundreds of them. What a trip. Nothing to do with Christmas, of course, except for the remarkable cathedrals and monasteries and cloisters we stopped at, places where the singing of chants was a daily occurrence for much of their lives, part of the fabric of the place, as it were.

These definitely did not chant.


Actually, the French occasionally can be irritating, I know, especially with their little trick of pretending not to understand English. But they’re not nearly as irritating at this as the Germans are. My favorites are always the ladies at the newspaper kiosks where they always spend a good two minutes, muttering to themselves, pretending to look for the price of the Herald Tribune or The Financial Times, even though they must sell dozens a day. I just stand there and look innocent. Of course, I could always learn French or resuscitate my German–that would probably solve the problem.

There are lots of medieval Christmas chant albums not by medieval babe groups. It’s not as if many of these chants were actually sung by women at the time (although I gather that recent scholarship disputes this, but I’m not about to get into this argument before I do a little more research). But there are a couple of old chestnuts that come to mind here, from either a male choir or a mixed choir. We’ve already mentioned the excellent album put out by the Niederaltaicher Scholaren, Christmas (The Moosburger Graduale of 1360), and Sequentia’s Aquitania, a series of 12th century Christmas chants from Aquitaine. Sadly, the Moosburger CD appears to have been discontinued, but these can always be tracked down somewhere. Also worth tracking down is Missa Medaeivalis, a collection of chants and organ solos from Capella Antiqua Stuttgart, which to my utter astonishment can be found on Amazon. This is very aggressive chant. What does that mean? Give it a listen and you’ll understand. The Chant of Christmas Midnight, from Schola Cantorum of Saint Peter’s in the Loop, was highly popular for a number of years, but it too seems to have been discontinued. There are others, of course—this is just a sampling of some of the chant albums that have attached themselves to me over the years.

A number of years ago clever marketers at record companies hit on a fresh marketing strategy, which appears to have worked. It was to repackage classical music, or bits and pieces of it, as Music for Relaxation. We are now so acclimated to this whole meme that we forget that music is supposed to do many things, and it’s not clear that “relaxation” is one of them. There’s nothing relaxing about listening, really listening, to music, and Christmas music, especially chant, is no exception. The dozens of chant CDs over the past two decades designed to be “relaxing” have done a disservice to both the music and its listeners. This was—and still is—a vital and frequently idiosyncratic form of music-making that requires attention, diligence and patience to perform, and listening should entail a comparable skill set. This was music that was created and performed for any number of centuries, with often unique regional attributes, and a range of complexity and beauty that even today continues to astonish. Go listen.

Christmas music (13)–Best Boston Camerata Christmas album

This is hard. There are so many to choose from. We started going to their concerts in the 1970s when we were living in Providence, and have been going for decades, actually, including their occasional forays to London. A couple of years ago we timed our trip to Boston so we could hear their Christmas concert, as well as go to the Revels for the first time in a couple of years. The Camerata is responsible for the best bunch of Christmas music ever to have been recorded by a single American group, so I’ll just mention the highlights–A Medieval Christmas, A Renaissance Christmas, Noel (medieval French), Sing We Noel (early American and English), An Early American Christmas, A Mediterranean Christmas. They’re all great. Blue light special for bargain shoppers–you can get a threesome set (Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque) cheap at this time of year. I guess if I had a favorite, it would be Sing We Noel. But that old Medieval Christmas has held up well for well over thirty years now, and it’s still one of the best Christmas albums out there.

Why is Boston so musical? I have no idea, but it is. It probably has more singing groups per capita than anywhere else in the US, and perhaps else, period. The group I sang with, Musica Sacra, was really good–but just one of about a dozen really good groups in the immediate Boston area (in the case of Musica Sacra, Cambridge, actually). They’re still going strong without me, thankfully, and you just missed their Christmas concert. It’s a New England thing, I think–-most New England areas have lots of singing groups, and then there are the music schools in Boston, along with Tanglewood and everything else. And in New England’s case, we’re talking about a couple of hundred years of musical tradition. It’s one of the things that makes some of us think that Boston is the best American city. Singers galore! If you’re a singer in the US, it’s as good a reason as any to move to Boston. At the moment, the unemployment situation isn’t any worse in Boston than anywhere else in the US anyway—you might as well live in a place where you can do what you want to do really, which is sing.

Camerata performances have changed over the years, and I’m a bit ambivalent about that. Back in the 1970s these were large, occasionally boisterous affairs, with up to a couple of dozen singers up on the stage, depending on the program. Over time the quality has improved some, no doubt—that’s what musical groups are supposed to do—but this has also been accompanied by a decrease in the number of singers. Maybe this is because it just becomes harder to sustain the costs of a larger group—heaven knows how symphony orchestras manage to pull this off. But I suspect part of it may be the increased emphasis on authenticity that has emerged in early music performance over the past few decades as well. I’m sure the academic justification for this approach is apparent, and I would understand it completely if someone were to explain it to me. Still, there are times when we miss the chaotic cheerfulness of some of those early performances.

Joel Cohen, who founded the Camerata back in the early 1970s, recently retired as Musical Director, turning things over to the capable hands of his partner, Anne Azéma. So we have every expectation that the Camerata will continue to thrive. They do show up in London from time to time, but erratically, although they spend part of every summer in France. The last time we saw them here they were accompanying the Tero Saarinen Dance Company dance troupe in Borrowed Light, a series of dances inspired by Shaker Music, which the Camerata now have several CDs of. And for those of you in the Boston area, the Christmas concerts started last weekend. It’s a Mediterranean Christmas this year, one of their best themes.

Christmas music (12)–Best Christmas album by a solo guitarist

The New Possibility, by John Fahey. Actually, this was Fahey’s first Christmas album, and there were a number of follow-up albums, but you can get all the first and most of the second on a single CD with the same title. Fahey was a visionary and peripatetic American guitar player who has influenced practically everyone who happened to even walk near a guitar since. Starting out with his own label (Takoma) at a time when crating your own label was practically unheard of, he built an incredibly loyal following during the 1960s and thereafter that stayed with him until his death several years ago. Most of his albums were straightforward and blues-based, but he could get very experimental as well–the first half of Requia, for example, is straightforward guitar–the second side sounds like Charles Ives on drugs.

I saw Fahey only once, at a small church in one of the more nondescript parts of San Francisco in 1972. It was actually my second date with Mrs. W, and considering we spent half the night trying to find the church, wandering around hills for what seemed like hours, it’s amazing there was a third one. She is a very patient person. He didn’t have much of what would be called stage presence until he played–and then you were mesmerized.

This one is a true one-off; practically no one played like Fahey, who developed a number of his own finger styles, and who would work chords relentlessly. Here he takes a bunch of old chestnut carols and reworks them along any number of dimensions–some are exactly what you would expect to hear on guitar, and some have the most amazing variations. And some just, well, bounce right along–his version of God rest ye merry gentlemen alone is worth getting the CD for. If you have never encountered Fahey’s music, consider yourself culturally deprived; this is a good place to start.

Some other candidates: For the more soporific among us, there’s the Windham Hill Holiday Guitar Collection. Which is nice and gentle, and probably better quality than most of the new age stuff out there, but still might put you to sleep. Then there’s all sorts of duet type albums—guitar and flute, that sort of thing.

And then there’s Christopher Parkening, a fine classical guitarist in his own right, who has an album with soprano Katherine Battle called Angel’s Glory. This pairing isn’t as odd as it sounds, and in fact Parkening and Battle have done another album, Pleasures of Their Company, which are songs by John Dowland. The result is, well, mostly Battle, who has legions of fans and legions of critics, with Parkening providing a lovely backdrop. So it’s not actually a guitar album, although it does have some interesting Spanish selections that you’re not likely to hear elsewhere. It would be nice if Parkening had a solo Christmas album, but he doesn’t, although he does have a volume of Bach pieces, which might substitute.

And then there are several jazz classics, by Charlie Byrd, Kenny Burrell and, more recently, Al di Meola. Byrd’s offering, Christmas Carols for Solo Guitar, was originally released in 1967. It’s still an amazingly strong album, but it’s pretty straight up, without a whole lot of embellishment. Byrd was, among other things, one of the artists mostly responsible for introducing Brazilian music to America in the 1960s, and was also perhaps the first great acoustic jazz guitarist—Jim Hall is his natural successor. Burrell is also a very traditional jazz guitarist—he played with Duke Ellington—and his album Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas (released in 1966) is also pretty straight up jazz—again, the song selection is pretty traditional. Di Meola’s Christmas: Winter Nights is probably the most interesting, both in terms of song selection (not just the same old carols, but some of his own compositions) but also in style. And di Meola plays lots of other instruments as well—percussion, of which there is plenty, as well as harp, piano and whatnot. It’s a bit more subdued than some of di Meola’s other albums, but that’s fine. A strong runner-up to Fahey in the “if you’re going to have only one Christmas guitar ablum, this is the one to have” category.

Fahey’s work also shows up on a gem called Must Be Santa: The Rounder Christmas Album, which is an enjoyable hodgepodge of stuff from acoustic veterans like Fahey and David Grisman to rockers like George Thorogood and NRBQ to bluegrassers like Tony Trischka and The Johnson Mountain Boys. A treat. Thank God for Rounder Records.

So when is Ralph Towner going to put out a Christmas album?

Christmas music (11)--Best Christmas album I ever picked up on a supermarket checkout line

Christmas in Eastern Europe. Anyone who has been in an American supermarket over the years knows what an increasing nightmare trying to get through the checkout line can be, especially if you have kids of any age. That's because the stores put all the "impulse buy" items there--candy, soap opera magazines, the latest Adam Sandler DVD. And at the holidays they load it up with all sorts of silly holiday stuff, including really bad Country Christmas CDs. But occasionally a gem slips through.

There’s this label called Laserlight, that may or may not still be in business, and they specialize(d) in inexpensive (cheap!) CDs, mostly classical music, with the occasional Jerry Vale or The Lettermen’s Greatest Hits thrown in. These are the CDs you used to find in, say, the Wal-Mart bargain bins, or by supermarket checkout lines—and for all I know, you may find them there still. The reason their CDs are so cheap is that they use The Moldavia Symphony Orchestra, or some other musical group from what would formerly have been called “behind the iron curtain”, and probably pay them peanuts for the rights to their recordings. And sometimes the musicianship is astonishingly good, even though the recording quality may be mediocre at times. In this case, it’s the Bucharest Madrigal Choir, whoever they are, but they’re fantastic. I don’t understand a word of it, but I don’t care--it sounds great. They have some very credible renditions of some Bruckner, and some Schütz, but mostly its traditional Romanian Christmas songs, sung in Romanian, and they’re really nice. Yes, another round of music in a language you won’t understand a word of.

It’s interesting music for another reason—Romania is an Orthodox Christian country. So it’s had a religious tradition that’s slightly different from that of the Western European churches for, of 1500 years now, roughly? Yes, the great schism occurred in 1450, but in reality the western church had been evolving away from the orthodox model for centuries, largely as a result of the growing political and economic differences between the two cultures. So it carries all sorts of eastern, for lack of a better word, influences that we don’t normally associate with the western church music tradition. For those of us who grew up in the straight Western European tradition, it’s often a shock to first hear Christian music that has been so heavily impacted by the co-existence of another culture, in this case Byzantium—much like the music that came out of Spain prior to the expulsion of the Moors. In fact, Christianity probably appeared in Romania in the second century, certainly with the Romans, and perhaps apocryphally with St. Andrew. This is earlier than Christianity occurred in a number of Western European cultures. And as a result of being part of the Byzantine Christian culture, and relatively isolated for so many centuries from Rome, the liturgy developed in a parallel but different manner as well—even today, most Orthodox services are largely sung rather than spoken. Which means chants were different, and never got standardized as they were in the west when Gregorian chants came along.

I got to go to Romania a while back, actually around this time, so I got to do some Christmas shopping there as well. Boy, was my family surprised. It’s about the longest flight you can take from London and still be in Europe (well, maybe Athens is a little longer). Occasionally I get to go to weird places. This trip was to look at the railroad that the government was privatizing. Their main problem was replacing the locomotive fleet. After looking at one of the locomotives, I understood why. Romania has lots of coal, it turns out. It also has lots of WWII vintage locomotives. It also has lots of big Stalinesque-type buildings that go on forever--I thought these things had all gone, but no. They’re really big, with twelve floors and no elevators, and they’re usually set off in the middle of nowhere. They’re also too expensive to replace.

The Christmas shopping was glassware, and very nice it was too. Romania turns out to be a real center for it, and it’s much, much cheaper than the great stuff from Finland and Sweden. Of course, if you’re in Finland or Sweden, there’s a whole lot of other stuff to do, and that’s not really the case in Bucharest, admittedly, unless you want to find buildings it takes you half an hour to walk past.

Romania, and a bunch of other mostly eastern European countries, have joined the European Union, bringing total membership up to 25. This should be fun—the EU is in the process of conducting the largest experiment in spreading democracy in history. The US talks about expanding democracy, but of course you’re never quite sure if it means it, given experiences in, oh, Latin America, Asia, Africa, the mideast; Europe is actually doing it, and it will be quite interesting to see if it pulls it off with 25 separate countries trying to be unified yet retain their own identity at the same time. Of course, no one thought it would work with fifteen members (I guess whether it actually has worked is a subject for debate), so I wouldn’t write off its chances just yet. Actually, Romania and all the new EU entrants will be fine. This is because Europe is engaged in what we call a “transfer of wealth” to Eastern Europe and Russia, much the way that the US is right now with China. In fact, very much like what the US received from England in the 19th century.

The EU thing continues to be one of the more interesting geopolitical things going on in the world. In part, this is because Turkey (a member of NATO) would like to join, and this proposal is controversial, with outright opposition from a number of countries (particularly France and Belgium) until Turkey cleans up some of its more egregious human rights abuses. In that respect, Turkey hardly helped its case back in 2005 with the trial of their most famous novelist, the Nobel-prize winning Orhan Pamuk, on the ground of "insulting the state" under a new law. Pamuk wasn't the only writer or intellectual to have been charged--there were over 60 at one point--but Pamuk is by far the most prominent--so much so that the Turkish government found itself in a real dilemma, and seemed quite uncertain as to whether to continue with the trial. It did, and Pamuk was acquitted.

What was demonstrated, yet again, is the familiar tension between an educated urban populace, and an uneducated, traditional, and resistant rural population. Turkey is experiencing what so many other countries have experienced in the past, and are experiencing now. In this respect, Turkey resembles, oh…the US? That sounds about right. The cries for one form of censorship or another from the religious right over the past two decades have been characterized by the same sort of fundamentalism and flat earthism that led politicians representing rural Turkey to pass a law that made it a crime “to insult Turkey,” and to bring prosecutions under the law against Pamuk (and others).

Joan Smith visited the trial, which ended up going in Pamuk’s favor, and reported in The Independent. This does not sound like behavior the EU should be encouraging:

I expected trouble when I arrived at the court building in Istanbul on Friday, but nothing like what actually happened. I was there to observe the trial of my old friend, the novelist Orhan Pamuk, who has been charged with denigrating Turkish identity, on behalf of the writers' organisation PEN, but I was unprepared for the throng of screaming hate-filled faces as he arrived and left the drab district court in the suburb of Sisli. Inside and outside the six-storey modern building, dozens of Turkish police in riot gear stood by as Orhan was struck on the head and his supporters were jostled, punched and kicked. Screams of "traitor" filled the air and his car was pelted with eggs when he emerged into the street after a hearing that left this important case unresolved.

In all, about 60 writers and journalists are facing trial in Turkey, many of them under Article 301 of the penal code introduced in June this year and supposedly intended to bring the country's laws on freedom of expression in line with the EU. None of these people can be feeling safe this weekend after the disgraceful scenes in Istanbul were shown on TV and reported in yesterday's newspapers. From the point of view of the Turkish government, which was given the go-ahead to begin accession talks only two months ago, Friday's events could hardly be more disastrous, calling into question not only its commitment to human rights but its willingness to protect some of the country's most courageous and gifted people.

Sounds like a bunch of teabaggers, doesn’t it? How these new laws are supposed to represent being "brought in line with the EU" is a bit unclear. Turkey has since modified Article 301, by requiring the approval of the Minister of Justice before any prosecutions can be brought—but the law still stands. And, ironically, more recently Turkey has been making fewer noises about joining the EU anyway, although its official position remains the same. We’ll see. I note that the most recent flag burning amendment introduced in the US Congress failed to pass the US Senate by only one vote. A proposed Constitutional Amendment requires 67 Senate votes to pass—this proposed amendment received 66. End of days, anyone?

Christmas music (10)--Best Christmas album by someone whom you’ve probably never heard of, and you probably need to order it off their website

Nowell, by Glenda Dove, Mitzie Collins, and Roxanne Ziegler. Who also did Ornaments, and Rejoice. Who? I have no idea, except that they seem to live in upstate New York, and their album is on Sampler Records, out of Rochester, New York, and Sampler has a website. Order all three. I bought this record about fifteen years ago (on vinyl!), and loved it, and it’s still great. Harp, dulcimer and flute, that's it. Some great jazzy arrangements too, and the song selection ranges from medieval to recent--they cover the lot. Some of the arrangements are just stunning. I’m listening to it right now, in fact. You should see their picture. They look as if they like nothing better than playing pretty music, making apple pie, and looking for a nice scrap for the center of the quilt. And probably making samplers for their grandchildren. In fact, they look just like us. Or some of us, anyway. Just load these babies up in your iPod and you won't listen to anything else for days.

Christmas music (9)--Best English folk/indie/whatever Christmas album

Actually, for the country that invented the Christmas carol, you'd expect there to be a pretty wide range of choices, and you wouldn’t be disappointed, but still, you'd expect more. That's probably because the folks who would be making these albums are perfectly happy down at the church caroling away. Why hasn't June Tabor put out Christmas albums? Thankfully, Kate Rusby did one last year, and it’s a treat. But the clear winner here is the Albion Band, or The Albion Christmas Band. They have several albums out, and they’re all very English and very folky, including the brand new one this year, Traditional. Which means simple songs simply presented, with a modicum of accompaniment, but with great gusto.

The Albion band has been trundling along for over thirty years now. It was founded by Ashley Hutchings, who was the original bass player for Fairport Convention, including the fabulous Liege and Lief album. Anyway, they do more English folky stuff than Fairport does these days. In fact, Hutchings has been involved in multiple projects over this past decade, one of which was based on Cecil Sharpe. Sharpe was the guy who went around England and America at the turn of the century collecting folk songs, thousands of them, in fact, and they are all lodged in the Cecil Sharpe Center for Folk Dance and Song, not too far from where I live. Well, the collection is still used extensively by singers and dancers (he also collected dances!). Kate Rusby goes there two or three times a year to look up Yorkshire songs, for example. Anyway, the point here is that Hutchings, who is now in his early sixties and is also a pretty good actor, was touring the country a couple of years ago with a Cecil Sharpe show, along with several other musicians, doing some of the songs (and the occasional dance), and Hutchings reciting selections from Sharpe's journals. Just delightful. If he should come your way at some point, go--it's great fun. Actually, this year’s tour was fun too—Hutchings revisited the Larkrise Revisted program he originally developed in 1978, a collection of local English village songs at the end of the 19th century, when the world was changing. A marvelous show.

Now, when the English talk folk, they mean it. This means lots of traditional instruments—not just the fiddle, but also accordions—often lots of them—and whatever else may be laying around. You rarely hear accordions in American folk music—you often hear them here. So the music right away sounds a bit different just because of that. In fact, on one of the Albion Christmas albums you find a polka. And when you listen to this music, it’s clear where so much of American folk music came from—it’s the same musical tradition. And the other thing to keep in mind is the locality of the songs. Americans are used to regional difference across great distances—New England to Mississippi, for example, represents a dramatic difference in musical temperaments and styles. In England you can find that in villages forty miles apart.

The other point is this—as was mentioned earlier, carols are simply folk songs that have been adapted to a religious or celebratory occasion. And in the case of Christmas carols, these were often carols for some other occasion before they became Christmas carols. There is a long tradition, especially in Northern Europe and England, of this process. It shows up dramatically in a marvelous album by Waterson/Carthy, the venerable old family of English folk (and Eliza Carthy as well) called Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man, a collection of traditional carols, some for Christmas, some not. In fact, for the real deal, Topic Records (which brings us The Watersons, June Tabor and a whole slew of other greats) has issued a 5-CD set called MidWinter, which is an amazing collection of all sorts of English and American songs and poems for the solstice, Christmas, the turning of the year, and the those long winter nights. The long list of artists is impressive (too many to mention), and the music is interspersed with various readings, some of which you will be familiar with, some not. How about Robert Frost reading Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, John Fahey playing a waltz, Jean Ritchie, Ledbelly singing one of his own Christmas songs, lots of Watersons, Shirley Collins, and Ewan McColl—and that’s just part of the first CD. Delightful, although much of it is pretty raw, so it may take some getting used to.

There are others that come to mind as well--Maddy Prior Prior and Steeley Span have some holiday albums that are worth tracking down, and some less familiar groups with great names--Magpie Lane and Sneake’s Noyse—have recently put out a couple of CDs worth a listen. It’s Christmas music, not as we know it perhaps, but you’ll hear quite a few roots in all this.

I am deliberately excluding that weird category know as "Celtic Christmas", by the way. This is that awful category dreamed up by record companies once they discovered that Windham Hill records had hit a gold mine with their first two Celtic Christmas albums. Most of this stuff is noodling and soporific, although Windham Hill's second one (which actually had some singing on it, as opposed to all the others) was actually pretty good. Still, that's no excuse for the dozens and dozens of Celtic Christmas albums that now clutter the Christmas music bins in music stores, with generally dreadful noodly new age musicbabble. If you want to hear some real Celtic Christmas music, check out the real thing--Noels Celtiques, on the Green Linnet label. It's music from Brittany, sung by the Ensemble Choral du Bout du Monde (what a great name!), and sung in Breton, which is, unsurprisingly, a Celtic language.

There's something of a Celtic revival going on again, by the way. These crop up every couple of decades. The recent one, it must be said, is partly in response to the book by an English (of course) historian a while ago who claimed that the entire Celtic thing is a myth dreamed up by the Victorians, and latched on to by rabid Scottish nationalists. But there were real Celts, who started out in what is now Switzerland, and noodled around Europe until they ended up in places like Northern France and Western Britain, where they still are. Except for the ones in Northern France, who got pushed out to the edges of Brittany by the Normans, who were Vikings who thought they were French. Anyway, there's a big annual Celtic festival in Brittany, which I keep meaning to go to, because it sound like fun. Lots of fiddle music.

Speaking of France, how's the French-bashing going? Is that still going on? It's hard to keep track of who Americans hate, aside from each other, these days. People here are still confused by this. Especially now, since the French turned out to be right about the whole thing. So are people mad at them now because they were right, or what? No one there seems particularly mad at Bush, even though it's fairly clear that he lied through his teeth, although the level of disgust with Tony Blair keeps rising, especially with the more recent testimony coming out of the Chilcot commission. I note that Congressman Walter Jones, the guy responsible for changing the names of the fries sold in the Congressional cafeteria from "French fries" to "Freedom fries", later came out in favor of a withdrawal of US troops, and co-sponsored legislation to that effect. Times change.

Blair might actually be in some trouble here. You may have noticed he spends a lot of time in the US these days, far more than he does here. Well, he may have to. We are now into our third inquiry into what led up to the invasion of Iraq. (I notice the US does not actually appear to have had any yet. Just sayin’ is all). And the first two infuriated people so much because of their whitewash nature that this one looks like it may actually get somewhere. So far what has come out pretty clearly implicates Blair and his government in at least one key area—preventing the UK military from preparing for an occupation. The Blair government was so intent on camouflaging its intent to support the US invasion that it prevented the UK military from stocking up, as it were. Which was one of he principal reason why the first couple of years of the Iraq occupation was such a disaster. So while the US was unprepared for an occupation because of the willfulness, arrogance and stupidity of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith and Wolfowitz, the UK was unprepared by design. It’s hard to know which is worse, actually. This is apparently a potential war crime under the Geneva conventions, I am told in the UK press, according to testimony from senior UK military figures. And while the US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, the UK is. There is a perfectly plausible scenario her where what comes out of this inquiry could implicate Tony Blair as a war criminal. Of course, if he stays in the US, he’s not likely to be arrested.

Blair’s fascination with, and obeisance to, Bush was always something of a mystery here. There were the large marches of course, in which yours truly participated as a veteran. But the oddest episode of all came in 2004 with Bush's state visit. This was a complete disaster, although I suspect it wasn't played that way in the US media. They had to keep canceling events that he was supposed to do. Like a joint address to the House of Commons and the House of Lords, because too many people would have been yelling at him. And then there was the meeting with the families of British soldiers who have died in Iraq--they had to work really hard to find some who were prepared to be civil. Most families simply refused to meet him (although quite a few of them would still really like to sit down with Mr. Blair for what would undoubtedly be a lively discussion). Actually, a few weeks before he showed up there was this spirited dispute between the palace and the foreign office over who had actually invited Bush--each denied it. So that's still a little mystery. Actually, it looks like it was set up between Bush’s first ambassador, who was referred to as "The Invisible Man" in diplomatic and press circles since no one had ever seen him (hint--he usually wasn't even here, but back in Kentucky), and the Queen, since they're apparently friends from being horse people.

It's not clear what the Queen thought of all this, but some hint was provided by the seating at the State dinner, which was frankly bizarre--she seated Karl Rove next to Charles Kennedy, the former head of the Liberal Democrats, whose opposition to the war was long, loud, and, as events have borne out, quite justified. They must have had quite a conversation. Much was made, by the way, of the size of the entourage Sparky brought with him--three jumbo jets, 700 people, both his limos (he always travels in a group of limos so that no one knows which one he's in--that will certainly fool those wily terrorists), and an extraordinarily large secret service detail, who astonished the Brits by requesting diplomatic immunity for shooting demonstrators, and who wanted to set up missile launchers for crowd control. And who wanted to close the London underground for the days Bush was here in the area Bush was going to be, and all the main shopping streets. No wonder people here think Americans have lost their minds.

Then there was the £5 million cost to the city of London, which then-Mayor Ken Livingstone requested the national government help out on, only to be turned down by Tony "suddenly there's no money" Blair. Ken's comment was that it was costing every Londoner £2 for Bush to come (his math isn't too good), but that they would probably all pay £4 for him to stay away. There was indeed a considerably beefed-up police presence around the places where Bush was hanging out--so much so that crime rose 20% everywhere else in London while Bush was here. There was also some lively discussion in the press of the last time Sparky met the Queen--at a White House reception in 1991 or thereabouts, when Pop was president, and Sparky showed up drunk in cowboy boots, and started chatting up the Queen with that great line, "So, do you have any black sheep in your family?" before Barbara stormed over and dragged him out of the room. True story.

Bush's more recent visits weren't any better, really. There was July, 2005, of course, for the G-7 (or G-8--I get confused) summit of world leaders, hosted at Gleneagles (where I have been known to get a very occasional par) by Mr. Blair. And, of course, that was the time of the London underground bombings. Tony looked pained, as well he damn well should. Bush just looked like, well, Bush. He waited until he got back to Washington to go to the British embassy there to sign the condolence book. What a putz. No one here (even Blair, I suspect) wanted him back. But come back he did, although he was pretty much ignored in subsequent visits.

Actually, maybe I'm a little hard on Bush. It is Christmas, after all. Just because I thought he was an unelected draft dodging chickenhawk insider trading convicted drunk driving ex-cokehead willfully (and boastfully) ignorant rich boy adolescent bully who will turn out to be the most destructive president in American history doesn't mean he hasn't done some good things. Or one, anyway.

This was the proposal to make fund-raising for terrorist organizations a capital offence. Punishable by the death penalty. Personally, as someone who has no philosophic objection to the death penalty, I think this is a splendid idea. Obviously, the thinking here is probably concerned with, you know, dark-skinned people with funny headgear. But this is much too limiting. The problem with this proposal is that it wouldn't be enforced broadly enough. If you raise money for people who you know are going to use it to blow up innocent women and children (among others), you should be prepared to face the consequences.

Consider representative Peter King, of Long Island, who is, by pure chance, a Republican. King has enjoyed a reputation as a maverick--he voted against Clinton's impeachment, and ran John McCain's campaign in New York in 2000. He's one of those really stupid American politicos that the BBC invariably finds when they want a comment on something. But King, who appears to be in the "not the sharpest tool in the box" category of politicians, spent much of the early part of the decade in vigorous French-bashing, actually accusing France of supporting terrorism because of its lack of support for Sparky's well-thought-out plan in Iraq. You know, kind of like Fox news, which when it first showed up here delighted everyone because the English all thought it was a brilliant satire—a version of The Daily Show in the daytime. More recently, King has shown alarming signs of being consumed by an unhealthy interest in Michael Jackson. King was also responsible for accusing President Bush of wanting US ports to be exposed to terrorists, and during the 2008 presidential campaign agreed with John McCain when McCain called New Yorkers elitists, indicating that age has not diminished his facilities one bit.

King is less well known for his support of various Irish organizations since the early 1970s, and he has spent quite a lot of time and effort during the past two decades decade bashing the English for their history of human rights abuses in Ireland (a claim that is not without historical foundation, frankly, but since England is the only real ally the US has at the moment, this seems a little ungenerous on King's part). However, King also has some dodgier connections. He has regularly received money from a group named the "Friends of Sinn Fein", a well-known IRA front organization, and has been a strong supporter of a group called Noraid. Noraid claims to raise funds for families of victims killed in "the struggle", and is surprisingly still quite active in fund-raising. Check out their website. One might think that "the struggle" was mostly over at this point, but one would apparently be wrong. In fact, the Department of Justice required Noraid to register as an agent of the Provisional IRA. Now, Noraid has denied raising funds for the IRA or, more recently, the Real IRA (those gents responsible for bombing Omagh in 1998, killing 30 or so, mostly women and children, on a crowded Market Saturday). But the FBI is apparently not convinced, and, you know, these guys get their money from somewhere. A couple of years ago, King decided that he no longer wants to be associated with the IRA. What are King's views on the Bush proposal, one wonders?

So, my fellow Americans, the next time you're in some Irish pub on the east coast, like Boston or New York, listening to some nice Irish fiddle band (or a Celtic Christmas show!), and someone passes the hat for "the country" or "the struggle", think again.

Christmas Music (8)--Best folk/indie/whatever Christmas album

This is a bit of a mix in terms of category, because I have no idea what music gets called these days, or why. Folk used to have a fairly specific meaning in US music—and it still does in the UK and much of Europe. But lines have gotten pretty blurred the past several decades, and now it seems as if “folk” is applied to pretty much anything that isn’t rock. And even here it gets messy—what genre would one call The Levellers, for example? Anyway, the choice here is pretty straightforward--The Roches, We Three Kings. Since there are three Roches, the title is ironic, I suppose. But it’s a wonderful album--the Roches all have high thin reedy voices, but they harmonize extraordinarily well, and there are some lovely arrangements of all sorts of music, from the usual carols to Handel, and some of their own songs as well--Star of Wonder is a gem. This was my kids’ favorite Christmas album when they were smaller, perhaps because of their definitive version of Frosty the Snowman, sung in New Yawkese. It still gets plenty of play each Christmas. We’ll give this one to the Roches--this album has just brought everyone I know just too much sheer enjoyment.

Running pretty close as a main choice are the two Loreena McKennitt Christmas—or more properly, seasonal-- albums, To Drive the Cold Winter Away and A Midwinter’s Night Dream. Again, like The Roches, it’s hard to know how to categorize McKennitt, whose output ranges from straight-up Canadian folk to world music in the broadest sense—the label “Celtic,” if it ever fit in the first place, has long since seemed inapplicable. She has a husky soprano voice and an excellent sense of song selection. Of the two, I prefer the latter, probably because it’s the more recent. For the more druidic among us, Dream’s first half is mostly about the solstice celebration—this fits right in in England, of course. Both albums have a mix of singing and instrumentals, and the arrangements are glorious. An extraordinary artist, and ike all great art, these albums take you somewhere else.

Also in the pack is David Grisman’s Acoustic Christmas. Grisman has been making interesting music for decades, since his early days with Peter Rowan and his 1970s triumphs with his quintet—an elegant meld of folk, jazz, and whatever else comes to mind. It’s designed to be improvisational, but Grisman’s arrangements can also be quite complicated, requiring multiple hearings. For those not familiar with Grisman’s ouvre, this is a good place to start—you’ve got a treat.in store. It’s all instrumental, with Grisman firing away merrily on his mandolin

And actually, we need to make a distinction between more traditional “folk” singers like Jean Ritchie and singers like The Roches, or Shawn Colvin or Sara Hickman (both of whom also have Christmas albums, but they’re mostly covers). It’s all a bit amorphous, I know, but America (and Canada too) does have a venerable folk tradition, largely Anglo-Scottish-Irish associated with Appalachia in the case of America, but lots of other more regional traditions as well—the Germans in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Scandinavians in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas. They’re pretty much all immigrant traditions, of course. And then there’s a lively Hispanic one as well, but I’m not familiar with that one, at least yet. But these are still eminently worthy of attention (and even adulation). Perhaps most importantly, Jean Ritchie has two remarkable traditional folk albums, Kentucky Christmas: Old and New, and Carols for all Seasons. On both of these, you can hear the direct lineage to the English/Scottish/Irish tradition that pervades Appalachian music, with the American edge they’ve picked up over the years. Kentucky Christmas is mainly traditional Appalachian Christmas songs and carols; Carols for All Seasons is just what it says it is, including Christmas carols. Sadly, as is so often the case, Kentucky Christmas has, as Amazon so discretely puts it, “been discontinued by the manufacturer,” although you can still pick one up. Carols for all Seasons is happily still available.

I should also mention Peggy Seeger and various members of the Seeger family’s American Folk Songs for Christmas, a two disc set with a much broader range than Ritchie’s albums, from all over the country, in fact, collected by Ruth Crawford Seeger (the mother of Peggy and other sundry Seegers). And the album cover is wonderful—just like those great book covers of American children’s books of the 1940s and 1950s. Also, sadly, no longer available, but worth tracking down. Ewan MacColl (who was married to Seeger) is along for the ride. This is worth finding not only for the exuberance of the performances, but also for the range and diversity of the songs selection. A classic, and one hopes it will be re-issued at some point. With the same cover! The Pete Seeger Traditional Christmas Carols is pleasant enough, but really only of interest to diehard Pete Seeger fans, since it sounds like any other Pete Seeger album.

This is one of those categories where everyone is going to have a favorite, so these are just mine—I’m sure there are a number that I have missed. I suppose I should mention Shawn Colvin’s album of a few years back, and Sara Hickman’s. Both are great singers and songwriters (especially Hickman), but here they’re mainly engaged in traditional songs, some of which work better than others. I throw them in mainly because they are two of my favorite singers—but, again, in a sense they sound like any of their other albums. As in the rock area, it’s hard to find new Christmas songs that actually rise to the occasion. Dar Williams has written a truly great Christmas song--The Christians and the Pagans--but it’s just one song. I also have to say that I thought The McGarrigle Christmas Hour was dreadful, even though I love the McGarrigle sisters, but I suppose there are enough fans of Rufus and Martha that it was a hit. One listen was enough for me, though--it sounded like a bad junior high school glee club

Actually, the US folk music magazine Dirty Linen every year carries short reviews of the new folk Christmas albums of the year. And I’ve gone back and noted some of the reviews from past years (since I NEVER throw anything away, since you never know), as well as this year. And some look interesting--Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer's American Noel certainly warrants a look. Not that the past few years' albums has been all that much better. There’s an obviousness about many of these albums, sadly. What have the past few years brought us? Hey, look, some Celtic Christmas albums--big surprise there--including one by Anúna which might be ok. No Madonna, thankfully--how come she hasn’t done one yet? But there’s Emmylou Harris, who is a lovely singer, but I bet it sounds just like every other lovely Emmmylou Harris album. Ooh, John Denver. John Denver? A re-release. Robin and Linda Williams--that has a certain air of inevitability to it. Lot of Bluegrass collections. And a whole bunch of others. Actually, the Odetta one might be something--what category does that go into anyway? A couple of years ago Jesse Colin Young released one--he's now a dead ringer for Christopher Walken. And Carly Simon--why? I’m sure Kathy Mattea has one too—I mean, who doesn’t have a Christmas album yet?

Lots of people seem to like Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong. I have no comment. And I haven’t listened to The Burns Sisters’ Tradition, although I like their other albums. Nice title, though.

Finally, two other albums of interest. First, Harry Belafonte has two Christmas albums, both of which are available. It’s hard to know how Belafonte resonates today, but in the 1950s and 1960s he was a revolutionary figure. Since he was from the Caribbean, he managed to avoid much (but not all, obviously) of the stigma that was still associated with black artists who tried to cross over into a white audience. Belafonte was enormously popular not only as an interpreter of Caribbean songs, but also for covering a whole range of other folk music as well. And introducing a wide range of other artists--particularly Odetta and Miriam Makeba. Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean was the first real album I ever bought—I still remember saving the $3 or whatever it was and wandering down to the record story (as it was quaintly called then) and plunking it down, and going home and playing the album incessantly when my parents weren’t around. Not that they didn’t like it—they just weren’t interested in hearing it 25 times in a row. Anyway, the Christmas albums—Harry Belafonte Christmas and To Wish You a Merry Christmas—are both great, although you really only need the first, since everything on the second one seems to show up on the first one, with some additional songs. The second is the actual CD re-issue of the 1960 original, though. A mix of traditional Christmas songs done with the usual Belafonte élan and some other songs you’re probably familiar with, but that Belafonte was probably responsible for introducing to a wider audience—Mary’s Boy Child, for example. Required.

And, even though we have a whole separate category for them coming up, let me just mention The Boston Camerata, who have produced, among their many Christmas albums, two that contain early American Christmas music. First, An American Christmas. It’s just that—18th and 19th century Christmas songs that early Americans of that time would have been familiar with, from a variety of religious traditions—Mennonite, Baptist, lots of shape note singing. It will be very different from what you expect, frankly, unless you’re already familiar with this music—but you know what? It’s folk music. Second, Sing We Noel is a collection of English and American Christmas songs from the 12th to the 19th centuries, particularly the English ones. Again, it’s folk music, Jim, but not as we know it. The extraordinary The Midnight Cry shows up on both albums, and Sing We Noel has Fulfillment, a short song that will take your breath away. Each of these alone makes these albums worth owning.

Tomorrow we'll look at the English Christmas folk tradition.

Christmas music (7)--Best album to have on hand while you’re reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales to your children (or grandchildren)

This is tricky. You want it to be calm, since you don’t want the kids to get up and start dancing--that alone lets out The Nutcracker. You don’t want too much singing, because that would be distracting, and you want kids to enjoy Dylan Thomas’s wonderful language and stories. What would be nice is if you knew any Welsh composers who wrote Christmas songs, but you don’t, and I don’t either. So, instead, you want something kind of quiet and noodling and soporific...wait! How about A Celtic Christmas?

Well, how about something else?

What worked for me is A Charlie Brown Christmas, music by Vince Guaraldi. This selection lets me get this album on the list, plus I now don’t need another category called Best Jazz Christmas album (since I don't know enough jazz to really comment). Guaraldi was actually a very good jazz pianist, but got tarred by having a pop hit, like Ramsay Lewis, and his career never recovered, although he undoubtedly made tons of money from this album. And it’s a very pretty album indeed, even though it’s not remotely Welsh, with some gentle singing (but not enough to be distracting), and some lovely piano work. You probably got it for your kids years ago, and haven’t listened to it since. Haul it out if you can find it and give it a good listen. Even better, put it on, haul out that old copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and read it to your grandkids. Kids love this album.

And while we’re on the subject of Wales, whatever happened to Catherine Zeta Jones? Maybe she should get Sandra Bullock’s agent. Jones is, of course, Welsh. Maybe you didn’t know that. Everyone here does, though. The British always have this love/hate relationship with anyone from here who does well in Hollywood, and Catherine is no exception. Except that it’s really more hate than love in her case, since her reputation is, shall we say, legendary. And she snared Michael Douglas, after a hefty vetting of the prenup arrangement.

So way back when she and Michael decided to invite 500 of their closest and dearest friends to their wedding, which they held at the Plaza hotel in New York. And, just to make sure it was recorded appropriately for posterity, they signed a contract with OK Magazine here in the UK to do the photo shoot. OK is an English glossier and trashier version of People magazine. But it was just meant to be, you know, a small, private affair, for those 500 or so close and dear friends.

And then do you know what happened? Hello! Magazine, the other English glossier and trashier version of People, got hold of some other pictures of the wedding and published them first! And they weren’t actually the most flattering pictures, it must be said--those of Catherine mostly showed her eating, which she apparently does quite enthusiastically, and of Michael looking, well, old--a lot older than Catherine. Which, of course, he is. Michael is, after all, my age, and Catherine most definitely is not. So Catherine and Michael, who live in LA, did the American thing--they sued.

The trial, held right here in London, was great. Every day Catherine and Michael would show up, and lots of pictures would be taken. Catherine happened to be pregnant at the time and looked, well, a little beamy, so we got to see lots and lots of those pictures. The real object of interest, however, turned out to be Michael. Specifically, what exactly was the color of his hair, since it didn’t seem to be a color actually found in nature? Kind of, well, light orangey rust or something. Everyone eventually assumed it was simply yet another side effect of too much botox. You’ll be pleased to know they won the case. But they didn’t actually get much money--£2 million. So everyone claimed victory and went home, but not before we all got to see lots more pictures of the two of them. Although, in fact, it turns out they didn't really win the case, either--the verdict was later overturned.

Almost as many pictures as we used to see of Madonna, who is reputed to still live here, but who doesn’t really, to the delight of the rest of the country, who were just exhausted with her. And who is not Welsh. And whose new album is supposed to be just great! But the really big publishing news of a couple of years ago was that Madonna wrote a children's book. Does everyone know this? In fact, she’s written a bunch! There was this huge event at one of the larger bookstores where she premiered the book with a public reading. And she wore glasses! And there were about a thousand TV cameras there to record her reading it aloud! To her daughter, Lourdes, and some other girl who one presumes was suitably vetted for the occasion, chosen, undoubtedly, to make Lourdes look good. Of course, Madonna couldn’t actually be bothered to talk with anyone, other than her really good friend Stella McCartney (Paul’s daughter, the really famous designer), who showed up looking the way she usually does--really wasted, and really poorly dressed. No matter, Madonna is just so special she didn’t actually need to talk with anyone else anyway. And do you know what Madonna’s children's book was about? It was about this girl who gets bullied by other girls at school because they’re all jealous of this girl who is so perfect. Well, they learn their lesson, and then the book ends. Isn’t that amazing? It was probably churlish of some reviewers to point out that the names of the girls in the book who bullied the nice and perfect girl were uncannily like the names of real girls at the school that Lourdes went to.

You will be disappointed to learn that the book bombed initially--the only folks who bought it, apparently, were gay guys looking for presents they could give each other as a goof. But don’t worry--she had a contract to write a whole series, and she has! She’s now got a gazillion books out there for kids—just check them out on Amazon! And it certainly helps that most of them are available as audiobooks! For her fans, of which she still appears to have many, including those Amazon reviewers! Isn’t she amazing?

And getting back to A Child’s Christmas in Wales. How come the wonderful English/Welsh Denholm Elliott version is available as a DVD in the US, but not yet in the UK? What’s up with that?

Christmas Music (6)--Best Christmas album by a Nordic fiddle group

The Loveliest Rose, by Bukkene Bruse. This group is wonderful, and this is one of my favorite albums. They are led by the fantastic and cute as a bug’s ear fiddler Annbjorg Lien, who has several albums of her own (check out her website). I quite like Scandinavian folk music, especially fiddle music, because, mainly, it’s a bit different from British (and therefore American country/bluegrass) folk music--but not that different, actually, given the musical correspondence between Scotland and Norway that went on for centuries. (Edward Grieg’s grandfather was a Scottish immigrant to Norway—and this was not unusual.) Different rhythms and melodic structure, probably because of the weird Norwegian medieval music it’s all based on. I like Allison Krauss and Laurie Lewis as much as the next bluegrass fan, but if you want to hear a fiddle band do interesting stuff, check out Annbjorg Lien’s Aliens Alive, a live album from 2001. Available from North Side Records, as is The Loveliest Rose. More recently, Lien has been responsible for helping to put together together The String Sisters, who put out one of the best albums (and videos) of the decade a couple of years ago.

This raises, not surprisingly, the question of Norway. A very sensible country, which gives the highest percentage of foreign aid of any country in the world, and which represents a huge percentage of UN peacekeeping troops. A country that undeniably means well, in part because they feel little bit guilty about being so rich. Well, what’s wrong with a little guilt? It keeps you on the straight and narrow.

So why is Norway still whaling?

For much of the 19th century, the Hardanger fiddle played by Lien was banned in many Norwegian churches as being a tool of the devil. Norway now is a pretty remarkable place. It’s rich as all getout, of course, since it has wisely husbanded its North Sea oil and gas resources, unlike the UK, which as pretty much squandered them. Oslo is a pretty cosmopolitan city for being so small, the folk music scene is great, but the knitting scene is even better. I am fortunate in going through life surrounded by a sorority of knitters and quilters, which means that I’m always warm and always have attractive things hanging on the walls. And boy, Oslo is the place to go for yarn. We did a holiday there about three years ago as part of a Scandinavian trip (Denmark, southern Sweden, and southern Norway). We ate really well the entire trip, especially in Skane (where the Henning Mankel Wallander mysteries are set), saw some boring art in Copenhagen, saw some fantastic Viking petroglyphs in all three countries (they’re everywhere! Who knows this?), and bought lots of yarn in Copenhagen, and especially in Oslo. It’s not cheap—nothing there is—but boy, if you’re a knitter, you have to think about going there. We ran into knitting tourists from the US in the yarn shops. What a great idea—yarn tours.

A couple of years ago we went on a bus tour of the Shetland and Orkney islands. Probably the first and last bus tour we’ll ever take, frankly--partly because we brought the average age down. But we had a great time, especially in Shetland. Take a look at a map of Britain—and there’s Shetland, way up there in the North Atlantic somewhere. And if you look at the history (and pre-history) of this area, you realize that there’s this whole northern culture that has persisted for centuries more or less outside the European mainstream—and vestiges of it still exist. Scotland, Norway, the Shetland and Faroe Islands, and Iceland—these areas have been bound by kinship, trade routes, and culture for a millennia, at least. When high school kids in Shetland want to head to a city for a bit of urban night life, they head to the nearest city—which happens to be Bergen, in Norway. I can’t wait to go back—Shetland is famous for churning out fiddlers, and they have a Shetland Fiddle Frenzy festival every year that we were fortunate enough to catch while we were there. Our current Shetland fiddler of choice is Chris Stout, who hasn’t put out a Christmas album, but has a couple of fine solo efforts, and some even better work with Catriona MacKay. But there's a whole raft of them

While we’re in the general Scandinavian area, I may as well mention two other Christmas albums, also available from North Side. Or winter, in the case of Triakel, a trio from Sweden who are associated with a couple of Swedish rock bands, but use Triakel as a vehicle for more traditional folk stuff. Wintersongs is just that—songs of and about winter, which should appeal to those of us who think that winter is the best season. In Swedish, of course. And then there’s Can We Have Christmas Now?, by Sari & Mari Kaasinen, who are the founders of and singers for the Finnish group Värttinä. Traditional Finnish Christmas songs, in Finnish. Both, like The Loveliest Rose, are delightful to listen to, in part I think because you can’t understand a word they’re singing unless you speak Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish, but they still capture the spirit of the season. Finally, I should note that Helene Blum, of the Danish duo Karen and Helene, has a new Christmas album out, and of course it’s in Danish. Not that that will deter me from getting it—but I haven’t heard it yet, so can’t actually offer an opinion. First I have to figure out how to get it. Karen and Helene’s earlier Solen was lovely, though. They're singers, though, not fiddlers, although I gather Helene is married to a fiddler. So that makes it ok to mention it here.

Christmas Music (5)--Best Christmas album by the Rolling Stones

Hah—trick category, since there isn't one, and a Rolling Stones Christmas album is about as likely as a string section on a Gov't. Mule album. I throw it in as an excuse to mention that we saw the Stones a couple of years ago. In fact, the same week that a number of the newspapers had a great picture of Mick coming out of his osteopath's office. The concert was pretty good--Keith only fell over once, they've got Chuck Leavell from those great Allman Brothers albums of the 1970s on keyboards, and they do put on a good show--how can they not, with all those great songs? We went with another American couple, and we were both trying to remember the last big stadium rock concert we had been to. In our case, it was Elton John about six years earlier, and only because we got free tickets because my employer was using him in their ad campaign that year, and while Mrs. W says it was a rock concert, I'm not quite sure what it was. Before that it gets fuzzy. In our friends' case, it was Bob Marley--and he died in 1982.

The other point is that a "Rock Christmas album" is obviously an oxymoron. This is because Christmas, if nothing else, is a time of contemplation, a celebration of joy for Christians, and whatever rock is about, it's certainly not about contemplation. As Joey Ramone said, the important thing about rock and roll is that your parents should hate it. This is an admirable spirit, but not exactly the Christmas one. This does not make me want to run out and buy, say, the Beach Boys Christmas album, pleasant as it might be. What's the point? It would just sound like any other Beach Boys album, and I've already got one. The same holds for country music, and even bluegrass. I'm sure that if Emmylou Harris has a Christmas album (and who doesn't?), it's just lovely--and it probably sounds just like any other Emmylou Harris album.

Actually, when rock-type people try to do a Christmas album, it's usually hopeless. Jorma Kakounen, guitarist extraordinaire of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame, put out one a while ago, and it's--how to say this? Boring. A couple of years ago I bought the Christmas album from Moe, a pretty good Grateful Dead type band that likes to do a lot of jamming, in the hope that any album with "Carol of the Bells" on it was worth buying. Well, nice try, guys, but no dice. Jethro Tull also put one out as well a couple of years ago, but by the sound of the reviews it's pretty glum. No thanks. I guess if the Ramones had put one out, THAT would have been interesting, but I still wouldn’t really want to hear it more than once.

The only exception to this that I can think of is Slade. Slade is an English group whose original members hung it up in 1992, but had about 25 great touring years there, with legions and legions of fans, and were the best-selling British rock group of the 1970s, the decade of David Bowie and Roxy Music. Since then they’ve sort of re-grouped, or some of the original band has, and continues to tour. They never made it big in the US, although they were pretty influential on groups such as Kiss, who initially modeled themselves after Slade, but who never produced a Christmas album, and punk groups like The Damned, who never produced a Christmas album either. Little Feat, too—Lowell George was a huge fan. They’re probably best known in the US for Cum on Feel the Noize (they specialized in mis-spellings in their song titles), which was actually covered by someone named Quiet Riot (and more recently by Oasis). And they’ve written THE great rock Christmas song, called Merry Xmas Everybody. You can probably download it from somewhere.

Apropos of that, every December we head over to the Royal Albert Hall for the Jonathan Cohen Christmas Sing-along. This is more fun than anyone should legally be entitled to have. Cohen is great—he’s a wonderful composer and arranger, an enthusiastic and inspired conductor (especially of the audience), and a wonderful raconteur. He’s joined by torch singer and ersatz lounge act Sophie-Louise Dann, who is somebody or other in London musical theatre, I gather--Cats, I think, or something. Anyway, it’s a fantastic show, so popular that the producers of all these sing-along at RAH around Christmas now have three or four of them involving Cohen alone—plus he now does shows up in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and, if he’s not careful, they’ll be sending him on international tour pretty soon. And it’s just great. There are never any empty seats. And everyone is dressed up in Christmassy stuff, hats and whatnot, and many folks have sparklers and flashing colored lights that they wear…it’s just wonderful. And when the wave gets going, it’s unstoppable. And who’s in the audience? Well, we personally know someone who turned 92 this year (Jonathan’s mother, actually), and whole extended families of dozens of people, including toddlers. The RAH has made this sort of thing more difficult this year, sadly, by limiting the number of tickets per person to nine. Who books nine tickets? I tried to book ten, as we have the past couple of years, and couldn’t—so then you have to call that tenth person and tell them what seat to book. Jeez. Anyway, the point of this digression is that the closing number every year is always Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody, and it gets the biggest and loudest reception—and EVERYONE, from nine to ninety, knows all the words. Of course, this is a country where everyone seems to know all the words to Queen’s every song, including Bohemian Rhapsody. Still, it’s just wonderful. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is possible to write a great rock and roll Christmas song. But I only know one group that’s ever done it. And it’s about Christmas as one big party. Which is fine.

Thankfully, most rock groups seem to know that the very idea of a Christmas album is a losing proposition to begin with. Which is why we’ve been spared Christmas with The Doors, or Happy Holidays from Nine Inch Nails.

Christmas music (4)-- Best Christmas album by an American medieval babe group

This would be Anonymous 4, not only the best, but perhaps the only American Medieval Babe group. I used to go hear them at the lunchtime concert series at Trinity Church in lower Manhattan in the 1980s, before they got famous and sold something like a gazillion albums of what is basically 14th century chant. Good for them. They called it a day back in 2004, but you know how these things go—they still tour occasionally—check out the website. Anyway, the problem here is which one?

They've done four Christmas albums (including the most recent one, discussed below)—the chant ones are On Yoolis Night, Legends of Saint Nicholas, and The Star in the East, which is a bunch of 14th century Hungarian chants. My slight preference is for the third one, because it has a little bit of an eastern edge, but they're all wonderful. Anonymous 4 was a real person, by the way--musicologists actually know who some of the different "Anonymous" personages were--they just don't know their names. There's even some suggestion that Anonymous 4 was a woman. And there were certainly women composers back then, Hildegarde von Bingen for one. This was before the church decided women needed to be relegated somewhere out of sight, though.

One of Mrs. W's many mystery series that she ploughs through regularly is the series with Sister Fidelma, by Peter Tremayne. Fidelma is a member of the Celtic church, which merged with the Roman church in the 7th century. But there was a time when women had high posts in the Celtic church--Fidelma herself is a lawyer and an advisor to the church leadership. Actually, the reason I gave up on the series is that, lawyer or not, Fidelma is really, really dim, and is always the absolutely last person to know who did it. This person is a lawyer and gives advice to bishops? Still, the portrayal of the Celtic church of the time, and what it gave up to merge with Rome, is interesting. What one takes away from the series is a sense that the history of Christianity in Western Europe would have been very different had the Celtic Church not become subordinated to the Roman Church. One of those alternative history things.

I am not including the most recent Christmas album by Anonymous 4, Wolcom Yule, which is nice enough, but doesn't work as well. Voices that can be mesmerizing in one form of music don't always work on other types of music--in this case, Celtic and English songs and carols, including a bunch of 20th century stuff. For this type of material, you need stronger solo voices, which is not necessarily what you want for perfect harmonies in a chant setting. A nice try, but not up to the standard of the earlier albums, all of which are worth getting. Actually, they're all pretty enchanting. For something outside of the Christmas meme, check out either 1000: A Mass for the End of Time, or, for something a bit more raucous, Voices of Light, composed by Richard Einhorn to accompany the Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. You can also buy all four Christmas CDs in one set.

The origin of medieval chants is one of those things musicologists have been arguing about for generations. The earliest chants, say in the fourth, fifth or sixth centuries, were thought to derive from the traditions of reciting the psalms from memory, and this is thought to have evolved into some sort of musical performance within churches. While recent scholarship has questioned this traditional explanation, it seems clear that the early church had music as part of the liturgy. One of Pope Gregory the Great’s many reforms of the church was to codify much of the musical liturgy of the time. There is something of an urban myth the Gregory, whose Papacy ran from 590 to his death in 604, actually authored Gregorian chants. While Gregory did compose some church music, though, Gregorian chants actually emerged in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Rather than being written by Gregory, they are rather thought to have been named in his honor.

Actually, the story is considerably more interesting. Chants developed in monasteries as well as the church through the mass. And since there were monasteries and churches all over Europe, a number of competing chant traditions evolved, both within the churches (in different forms of the mass, and different masses regionally for important celebrations such as Advent and Christmas) and in monasteries. According to Thomas McKinnon in The Advent Project, during the late 7th century the two main traditions, the Gallican and Roman traditions, were merged under the Carolingians. This didn’t occur by accident—it was actually orchestrated as a way to standardize the chant, around the same time as the basic elements of the mass was also being codified. And Gregorian chants were one of the most impressive musical developments in history—within a short time, they had spread through much of Europe, displacing more regional chant forms under the aegis of the church, which was seeking as much standardization (and control) as possible. Some of this occurred through the aggressive efforts of Charlemagne to spread Christianity during the 8th century. By the end of the 9th century, Gregorian chants had displaced the Celtic chant and the Slavonic chant, and by the end of the 10th century had even displaced traditional Roman chant in Rome. And the unification wasn’t just for the form of the Mass Proper—it was to standardize the liturgy, and the accompanying music, for the entire church year.

Of course, regional variations persisted in monasteries, just as regional differences emerged in popular song in, say, the 12th century between portions of what is now France and what is now Germany. And the Christianization of Europe was a process that took hundreds and hundreds of years—portions of what are now Germany and Lithuania weren’t fully Christianized until the 14th century. You can still find all sorts of obviously pagan sculptures and carvings in English churches built as late as the 16th century. So even after the Gregorian chant emerged triumphant in the Mass Proper, there remains considerable variation across Europe in the non-mass chants—for example, those that were used in monasteries to mark the various hours of the day. Some of these variations are most pronounced in Spain, where the Moorish influence had a significant impact on medieval music in general, including in the monasteries (expect a fuller discussion of this shortly). But this was true in other regions as well. A particularly lovely CD of Christmas masses called Aquitainia, by the medieval music group Sequentia, is a case in point. Aquitaine was not yet completely part of France at that point, and the contrast between these pieces and, say, those performed in In Natali Domini, by Niederaltraicher Scholaren, which are chants and songs from Germany of the same period, is startling. What I love about medieval Christmas music, including chant, is its distance from us, which just adds to the mystery of the music and the season. It’s Christmas music, but not what we would recognize as such. For me, that’s part of its appeal. The past, as David Lowenthal has observed, is a foreign country.

A word of caution is required here-doing a google search on "Medieval Babes" brings up some interesting surprises, some Not Suitable for Work. Forewarned is forearmed.