Christmas Hiatus

2011 has been a good year for this blogger. I saw Bob Dylan and The Barber of Seville for the first time; saw Spotify became a even better service since I started to use it in 2009 (though I slightly worry about their alliance with Facebook) and kept innovating; got to know many interesting online personalities since Spotify launched in five new territories this year, and learned a lot from those who kindly send me emails or contributed guest posts; and all my family are well. I hope it's a good year for you too, and I hope what I did on this site was helpful.

If you enjoyed this blog and want to give something back, you can buy me a book from my Amazon wishlists: (US, UK), or send an Amazon Kindle gift card to my email. Thank you. Here's a longer appeal from last year. The National Library, which is just one block away from my apartment, closed for innovation  (though I am sure that's just an excuse, they did that just like they blocked Twitter, Youtube or Blogger, where this blog is hosted) this year, so any help with books would be much appreciated. Please choose Standard International Shipping for the minimum postage. Getting the books before or after Christmas makes no difference to me, and they always arrived within two weeks though Amazon states 17-28 days.

I fear that might be too much to ask, in this economic turndown. So I also propose this, that I believe most of you can do: if you have any relative or friend who's interested in classical music but hasn't discovered Spotify, please show him/her what Spotify can do for a classical music fan. I truly appreciate your help on spreading the word for this greatest music service, and all the wonderful music it offers.

Thank you all for reading. Happy holidays, and see you in two weeks.

Guest Post: Not Just Another Classical Christmas Playlist

Last week I discovered a surprisingly enjoyable Christmas playlist on Twitter, and got in touch with its maker, writer Jack Spearing. Jack writes about classical music for indie music sites including Spotify's buddy Drowned In Sound. He is so generous that not only allows me to share his playlist here, but also wrote a hugely informative introduction to it. Here's Jack:

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Hello - my name is Jack Spearing. I'm an art historian by training, but I write on a freelance basis about classical music, film and art. Recently I've been writing a series of articles introducing the work of different composers for various websites who usually focus on indie music. My aim is to help people who want to know more about classical music but don't necessarily know where to begin. Spotify is a spectacularly helpful tool for me, and a brilliant resource for organising and passing on classical music in general, and I always include Spotify playlists in my articles. You can find some of my articles here and here.

Some music is made for Christmas, other music achieves Christmassyness, and sometimes music has Christmas thrust upon it. As such, Christmas music is a very loose category into which all manner of things can fall – choral religious works, winter symphonies and Christmas concertos, or just anything which happens to include jingle bells. This playlist includes all of these things, no matter how tenuous their connection to the festive season, but is purged (for the most part) of Christmas Carols and cheesy Christmas albums put out by particular singers. Music, despite its programmatic and associative possibilities, remains a fundamentally abstract medium, and as a result doesn’t always lend itself particularly well towards illustrating particular times of the year, so certain tropes do surface time and time again – falling snow, sleigh rides, chanting, evocations of winter, and so on. I’ve started the playlist with a selection of odd and ends, extracts and freestanding pieces, before moving onto a series of condensed versions of larger Christmas classics, and then ending with a few slightly less serious selections.

This is a link to the playlist (138 tracks, 8 hours), and here's a quick run-down of some of the pieces included:

• Prokofiev – Troika from the Lieutenant Kije Suite. A troika is a kind of Russian folk dance in which people imitate a carriage and horses, and in this case comes just after the wedding of Lieutenant Kije, a character taken by Prokofiev from a Russian folk story which satirises Tsarist bureaucracy. Lieutenant Kije himself is entirely fictitious – he is created as the result of a clerical error, and the Christmas association here is equally odd – the jingle bells were borrowed by Greg Lake (of ELP fame) for his song "I Believe in Father Christmas", and the link has persisted ever since.

• Delius – Sleigh Ride. English composer Frederick Delius, whose best known tone poem is probably ‘On hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring’ also provided a cheery little number for a colder season. The liberal use of jingle bells accompanying a chirpy folk melody makes this one of the most enjoyable of all Christmas pieces.

• Josef Strauss – Winterlust. Pretty much self-explanatory. A standard issue Strauss family Polka Schnell, with added jingling to tell you it’s Christmas.

• Rameau – Various extracts from orchestra suites. These are a bit of a cheat – there are no jingle bells here, only Tambourines. But if you don’t think about it too much, they do have a vague Yuletide feeling to them.

• Mozart – The Sledge. Composed in the year that he died, Mozart’s three German dances K605 mark the end of the composer’s long interest in dance. The sledge or “Schlittenfahrt” is the final piece in the set, beginning with a bumpy downhill journey before moving into a lilting section with prominent parts for angelic trumpets and, you guessed it, jingle bells.

• Michael Praetorius – In dulci jubilo. Some time before Mike Oldfield arrived on the scene, Praetorius produced what is perhaps the definitive choral setting of this medieval carol, which also includes a thunderous brass section.

• Rimsky-Korsakov – The Snow Maiden. This has nothing to do with Christmas. But it has “Snow” in the title, so draw your own conclusions.

• Perotin – Alleluia. Nativitas. Perotin isn’t a name that’s hugely familiar to most people, or even to a lot of classical listeners, but it ought to be. His vocal music is fantastic, particular pieces like Sederunt Principes, which show off his trademark technique of spending minutes on individual syllables of each word, intermingling and overlapping the voices in a complex, but nonetheless melodious, sonic texture. This piece, in case you haven’t guessed, celebrates the birth of Christ. 

• Bach – Sheep May Safely Graze. Although the link to sheep might have you thinking that this piece is about the Shepherds who visited Jesus in his manger, it was originally part of a strictly secular work, nicknamed the Hunting Cantata. It was only much later when eccentric composer Percy Grainger created his own much more festive arrangement, entitled ‘Blithe Bells’, that the piece came to be associated with Christmas. As we’ll see in the rest of the playlist, Bach wrote quite a few other pieces which have much stronger links to Christmas, but this is still one of the prettiest melodies he ever penned, so who cares?

• Corelli – Christmas Concerto. Normally the slow movements of Baroque Christmas concerti are extracted for their evocative qualities, and if you want to hear them in full then Naxos’ many and varied releases of this material are worth investigating, but I think that this anxious minor-key fast movement is better for calling to mind all the rushing and anticipating that the festive season brings.

• Tchaikovsky – The Seasons: December. Ordinarily it’s the June Barcarolle which is highlighted in this exquisite piano suite, or occasionally November, which was a favourite encore of Rachmaninoff’s. But this doesn’t really do justice to what is, I think, the best solo piano piece from Christmas composer par excellence – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

• Johann Strauss II – Die Fledermaus Overture. Again, really nothing to do with Christmas at all. But somehow it sounds as if it should be Christmassy.

• Charpentier – Noel sur les instruments. Charpentier wrote a comparatively large amount of Christmas music in the 1670s, including a cantata telling the story of the nativity, which can be found on the same album that this extract is taken from. The piece I’ve chosen is one of his lively arrangements of what were, even then, traditional carols, again with a tambourine.

• Waldteufel – Les Patineurs (“Skater’s Waltz”. Not to be confused with a work by Meyerbeer of the same name, Les Patineurs was inspired by a real ice-rink in Paris. Waldteufel, being a composer of light dance music, immediately saw the parallels between the elegant skaters and the denizens of the ballroom.

• Offenbach – Barcarolle. Originally this piece was an aria from an opera of Offenbach’s which had flopped, but the composer recycled the piece for his final masterpiece – The Tales of Hoffman. It has since become one of his most famous works, aside, of course, from the ubiquitous Can-Can. The Christmas connection comes from ETA Hoffman himself, because his story “The Adventures of New Year’s Eve” was incorporated along with others in Offenbach’s work.

• Respigi – Siciliana. Sicilianas are a kind of Baroque dance – slow and frequently in a minor key. Italian Baroque revivalist and deeply underrated composer Ottorino Respighi, who is best known for his spectacular Pines of Rome suite, was naturally drawn to this form in his collection of Ancient Airs and Dances, from which this piece is taken. As with Baroque Christmas concertos, it’s the pastoral quality to the music which is important here, as German and Italian composers of the time associated this style with Christmas Eve.

• Debussy – The Snow is Dancing. Taken from Debussy’s small set of solo piano pieces ‘Children’s Corner’, this miniature piece is one of many examples of the composer’s effortless ability to summon up images – in this case, the gentle, almost soundless falling of snow, buffeted by the winds.

• Bach – In dulci jublio. Music of a more explicitly festive bent from Johann Sebastian, this time on his instrument of choice – the organ. This piece is frequently played at the end of Christmas church services.

• Ryba – Bohemian Christmas Mass. Unusually for Christmas music, this is actually the composer’s best known piece, and it’s also the only work on this playlist sung in Czech. It employs the structure of a standard Latin mass, but also works in various elements of the Nativity story, and was supposedly written to mark Ryba’s reconciliation with local church authorities, who he was always pestering.

• Liszt – Chasse Neige (Snow Plough). The last of Liszt’s transcendental etudes, Chasse Neige is also one of the most difficult and programmatic in this set, which is one of the composer’s greatest achievements. The nearly constant cascade of trembling notes gives the effect of the ever present snow.

• Chopin – Winter Wind Etude. One of the last of Chopin’s Opus 25 Etudes, and another programmatic work, although admittedly less to do with Christmas and more to with the season as a whole, or perhaps the difficulties and obstacles of life in general.

• Mendelssohn – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. Another initially secular piece adopted for Christmas use due to its catchy tune. I’ve included this not because I enjoy carols, but purely to remind listeners of how many ubiquitous tunes that we assume have always existed actually had to be written by someone – the wedding march from a Midsummer Night’s Dream, also by Mendelssohn, being just one of many examples.

• Mahler – Symphony No.4, 1st Movement. Another cheat – nothing to do with Christmas, just jingle bells. But Mahler can always do with being a bit more popular, so that’s reason enough for me.

• Tchaikovsky – Symphony No.1 ‘Winter Daydreams’ – 3rd and 4th Movements. Tchaikovsky always struggled with sonata form and development, especially at the outset of his career, but his first symphony is still surprisingly accomplished. Don’t listen to those who say that only the 4th, 5th and 6th are worth hearing – his transformations of folk tunes into vast orchestral statements here are fantastic.

• Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker. The Ultimate in Christmas Music. Despite being endlessly cannibalised for use in adverts this ballet is refreshing and thoroughly enjoyable. Obvious highlights include the Waltz of the Flowers and Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy, but the whole work is permeated with Tchaikovsky’s particular genius for musical fun.

• Bach – Christmas Oratorio. One of Bach’s crowning achievements, and another of the finest pieces of true Christmas music. The work is actually a compilation of several different cantatas which were performed at different dates around the Christmas period. Along with the St Matthew and St John Passions, it ranks amongst Bach’s best choral compositions. John Eliot Gardiner’s interpretation of this piece is absolutely superb.

• Handel – Messiah. The Messiah is not strictly Christmas music, as it only deals in part with Christ’s actual birth, focusing instead on various aspects of his life and the Old Testament prophecies with which it had been connected. I’ve picked out a few of my favourite sections as well as some more obvious highlights, such as the endlessly repeated Hallelujah Chorus. John Eliot Gardiner again brings his excellent direction to the piece, restoring it to the more intimate number of performers for which it was originally intended.

• Vivaldi – Winter from the Four Seasons. I’m pretty sure Bernard Hermann stole ideas from Mendelssohn’s 4th Symphony, but I also wonder if he took motifs for the iconic Psycho score from the opening movement of Vivaldi’s Winter, which had been gaining in popularity in the decade before the film came out. Vivaldi himself, of course, was simply aiming to recreate a few seasonal sound-effects. To me, Winter’s three movements bring to mind sleet, followed by snow and fog, and ending with a fully-fledged blizzard. 

• Prokofiev – Cinderella. Once again, a piece which has nothing in particular to do with Christmas, but I felt like including it anyway. My tenuous excuse being that Cinderella is a very popular subject for that most bizarre of phenomena, Pantomime, which despite being English I have thus far managed to avoid.

• Rimsky-Korsakov – Christmas Eve Suite. Various orchestral extracts from the composer’s opera of the same name.

• Humperdinck – Hansel and Gretel. Before Engelbert Humperdinck beat the Beatles to Number One in the charts, he existed in rather different incarnation as a 19th century classical composer. Based on the classic children’s tale by the Brothers Grimm, the piece has enjoyed a Christmas association since its very first performance was given by none other than Richard Strauss on December 23rd 1893.

• Leopold Mozart – Toy Symphony. Although this work was essentially a novelty piece, it is now the best-known work from Mozart Senior, and includes a variety of bizarre effects, including bird calls, noisemakers and drums, overlaid onto what is otherwise a fairly straightforward piece.

• Rossini/Respighi – The Magic Toy Shop. This one is more or less self-explanatory, but on a musical note I should explain that this piece is made up of piano compositions by Rossini which were later orchestrated by Respighi and used in a production by the Ballet Russes.

• Poulenc – Four Motets for Christmas time. Francis Poulenc was one of the finest 20th century composers of Latin choral music, with his Gloria being particularly well-regarded. Although his works are often light and playful, these motets are marked by their seriousness, and sound simultaneously ancient and modern.

• Britten – A Ceremony of Carols. Don’t be fooled by the names – these are carols as you’ve never heard them before. The use of Middle English texts, harp accompaniment and a choir of boy sopranos make this a highly distinctive, beautiful and idiosyncratic piece, which ranks alongside War Requiem as one of Britten’s best choral works.

• Schutz – The Christmas Story. German is often dismissed as an ugly, guttural language, but nothing could be further from the truth. As if Bach’s oratorios and cantatas weren’t proof enough of this, Heinrich Schutz’s own version of the Nativity puts to bed the idea that German cannot be beautiful. Works like this would also later encourage Brahms to write in German too.

• Prokofiev – Battle on the Ice. I have no real excuse for the presence of this piece here. Not only is it not associated with Christmas, it is also irrevocably associated with a very different historical event. But it has “ice” in the title, and it’s a truly awe-inspiring piece.

• Schubert – Der Leiermann. The chilling final song of Schubert’s monumentally depressing ‘Winterreise’ (Winter Journey) Song Cycle. The piano mimics the sound of the hurdy-gurdy man of the title, while lieder master Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau describes him to the listener. A reminder, perhaps, that this is not always a happy time of year for everyone.

Guest post by Jack Spearing

A Brief History of Post-World War II Music

I am always fascinated by the seemingly incongruous worlds of music and other historical events. Isn't it a bit surreal that the last guardian of the classical tradition, Johannes Brahms, could have met the amateur violinist Albert Einstein? The latter was 18 years old when Brahms died. Richard Strauss, who was born in the year of Second Schleswig War, lived to see the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and composed arguably the last great late romanticism piece Four Last Songs three years after the bomb. Britten wrote his splendid yet shadowy Suite For Harp, "it is rather 18th century harp writing" as he put it, around the same time they put men on the moon. And Shostakovich was composing the formidable Viola Sonata when John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols. This bewitching conflict came all the way into the new millennium, when Gorillaz's single Clint Eastwood was released in 2001, the 71 years old Clint Eastwood himself had yet to make Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima, Flags Of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, and Changeling. That single could come out today and still sounds utterly fresh, by the way.

A couple of months ago, I had this idea of trying to make a playlist that reflects, and plays with this surface conflict, by choosing one popular song, and one piece of classical works from every post-WWII year. Before long I realized that it's simply impossible to pick up "best songs of the 1960s" or "most representative composition of the year", so I just let my personal taste take the lead, while sticking to some simple principles: The micro-interplay of consecutive tracks is most important. Classical tracks should be less than 10 minutes long in order to maintain the flow of the playlist, except for tracks at or towards the end. And of course I tried to embrace as many styles and genres as I could. Needless to say, the title of the post is exaggerated, but History of Post-WWII English-Language Pop Music and Western Classical Music would be just too dull.

I like the way this aerial survey begins with Bing Crosby's It's Been A Long, Long Time from 1945, is there a more appropriate title to start with? And the fact that Bruno Maderna's Notturno For Tape came out at the same time with Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven makes the former sounds more bold - classical composers were quietly experimenting electronic instruments when the pop musicians just began to realise that they could challenge the old LvB too. The slow movement of Barber's piano concerto works surprisingly well as a postlude to Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart In San Francisco. The triumphant ending of the heroic Bridge Over Troubled Water makes the violent striking of Crumb's Black Angles that "sail right behind" even more frightening. Reich's Electric Counterpoint works great as an prelude to EBTG's ode to nostalgia. Listen to the Snoop Dogg track and Peter Lieberson opera extract back to back, you probably would have a hard time figuring out which is the rapper. Both are from 1992. The interlacing of different kinds of music adds an inexplicable charm to the whole listening experience.

Here are the Spotify Playlists: 1945-1955  1956-1965  1966-1975 1976-1985  1986-1995  1996-2005

I stopped at 2005 as it's hard to find classical works from the last couple of years in recorded version. For the sake of usability I broke it down into 10-year, 20-track playlists. You can put them into a folder. Every playlist is within 2 hours, and offers much more fun when you listen to it from the beginning to the end. Pop songs are selected according to their initial release years, and classical works are according to the date of completion, not the premiere. I've double checked to make sure that all tracks are available in the UK and Sweden.

So, that's all for the Christmas Special. I may not post new playlists until 2011, and after three days I will set that Personal Appeal post sticky for the rest of the year. Don't worry about whether the books could be delivered in time for Christmas, the Chinese New Year is in February this year:) Thank you all for helping me share the music that I love. Best wishes for Christmas 2010 and the New Year to come.

I pasted the tracklists below, with Wikipedia or other useful links to each classical work:

A Personal Appeal from SCP Founder Ulysses

Sorry to make you go through this again... I just cannot resist putting up Jimmy Wales' piercing eyes that might have been following you around the interenet during the last few months on my site. Look into them, you may get very sleepy, and want to donate all your money to him.

OK, joking apart, here's a personal appeal from me:

This blog, Spotify Classical Playlists, is about to celebrate its first birthday at the end of this month. I have been sharing my Spotify playlists with you for almost a year now. Spotify is such an amazing service in so many aspects, and one of its virtues especially make this site possible: it makes sharing so easy, and fun. I compiled my playlists for my personal pleasure, but with a little effort, I can also share them to music lovers all around the spotified countries, and hear feedback from you, even get recommendations that has helped to broaden my taste, to which I am truly grateful.

If you find my site useful and want to give something back, you can buy a book for me from my Amazon Wishlist (US, UK), or send an Amazon Kindle gift card to my email (spotifyclassical at gmail.com). I live in China and lead a slightly above average life, which means all those books are extremely expensive to me. I am fortunate to live very near to the National library, but some books are not for circulation, like Hermann Abert's Mozart, and some books really belong to the "basic issue item" list that I want to keep them at hand, like The New Bach Reader. Thank you.

Lastly, I still have 17 Spotify invites left. If you want one, drop me a line at the email address above, or on Twitter, I will send/DM you the code. Enjoy, and beware, a storm of playlists is about to begin for the Christmas season.

Update: Another note from 2011.

New Yorker: Songs of the Years 1925-2010

This was not part of the Christmas Special plan, but when I saw this songs of the years list this morning on The New Yorker, I couldn't help to make a playlist for it. The Yankees got good taste, though it could be a bit tedious to listen through the whole thing as it's mostly American music. I will offer you a more refined one based on an more interesting idea next week. Stay tuned.

Here's the Spotify playlist: New Yorker: Songs of the Years 1925-2010 (86 tracks, 5 hours) For pre-1960 tracks like Art Tatum's Tea for Two, there might be many recorded versions, and I only chose the one from the year that matches the New Yorker list. The Digital Underground track from 1993 is not available and I replaced it with Wu-Tang Clan's C.R.E.A.M. released from the same year. And for the Beatles track I put in a cover version by Jimi Hendrix. Check out The New Yorker page for song list. I also pasted the song list below.

Amazon 100 Greatest Jazz and World Music Albums on Spotify

The Amazon editors listed 100 greatest albums of all time in a variety of categories. I use their Jazz and World Music lists to explore these genres. 98 of the Jazz albums and about 90 of the world music albums are on Spotify. I replaced the missing ones with other albums of the same artists.

Here are the Spotify playlists: Amazon: 100 Greatest Jazz Albums (1066 tracks, total time: 3 days) Amazon: 100 Greatest World Music Albums (1092 tracks, total time: 3 days) Press Ctrl (CMD on Macs) + G to browse in album view.

Check out the Amazon pages, Jazz and World Music, for album lists and reviews. The Christmas main course will be served next week. Don't worry about overeating, it will be organic food.

2011 Grammy Classical Nominations on Spotify

Check out the official site for a complete list of the nominated recordings.

I guess the Salieri: Overtures & Stage Music disk nominated for best orchestral performance is actually Vol.2 which was release in 2010, though it's not noted on the Grammy page. I put in Vol.1 as Vol.2 is not available. Plenty of new discoveries for me here, 20th century harp sonatas? Brazilian chamber works with guitar? One has to wonder why the Grammy pop juries seem can only appreciate teen pop and stadium rock. The new Ligeti quartets recording from Naxos is so fantastic that makes me want to dance to it. No I haven't, the wicked beat would sprain my ankle. And the 65-year-old Jessye Norman's splendid live recording Roots: My Life, My Song makes most other crossover albums sound like a crying shame, especially that Michael Bolton in disguise of a violinist;)  

Here's the Spotify playlist: 2011 Grammy Classical Nominees (319 tracks, total time: 1 day) Press Ctrl (CMD on Macs) + G to browse in album view. More Christmas Special playlists coming soon.

Deutsche Grammophon Christmas Series on Spotify

I'm gonna make this the shortest post of this site...

Here's the Spotify playlist: DG: Christmas (814 tracks, total time: 1 day) Check out DG's official page for full discography.

The real Christmas playlists feast is yet to come.

Winter Music, When You Dream of Springtime

Mozart: Schlittenfahrt (Sleigh Ride)
Michael Finnissy: Snowdrift
Howard Blake: Walking In The Air
Prokofiev: Cinderella -The Winter Fairy
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - Waltz of the Snowflakes
Debussy: Preludes for Piano, Book I: Footprints in the Snow
Holst: In the Bleak Mid-winter
Chopin: Étude Op. 25, No. 11,"Winter Wind"
Leroy Anderson: Sleigh Ride
Rimsky-Korsakov: The Snow Maiden
Charles Griffes: Winter Landscape
Ned Rorem: Winter Pages: II. The sun that brief December day
Raff–Symphony No. 11 "Der Winter": III. By the fireside
Josef Strauss: Winterlust Polka
Tveitt: Piano Concerto No. 4, II. Sparkle In The Winter Sky And
Astor Piazzolla: Estaciones Porteñas - Buenos Aires Winter
John Cage: The Seasons - : Prelude 1, Winter
Vivaldi: The Four Seasons, Winter: II. Largo
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.1  "Winter Daydreams"
Franz Schubert: Winterreise - Frühlingstraum (Dream of Springtime)

Here's the Spotify playlist: Winter Music (20 tracks, total time: 1 hour) I especially like the way Mozart's sleigh crushes into Finnissy's snowdrift in this playlist. Have a nice winter weekend.