Are there any classical works that you connect with a holiday?

Grinnin

New member
Are there any classical works that make you think of a certain holiday or other event?

Dvorak's 9th Symphony always reminds me of Thanksgiving Day. Maybe it's the title, The New World Symphony that makes that connection for me. But every year, when I'm preparing Thanksgiving dinner I listen to it over and over again. (Lots of potatoes to peel, sauces to make.)
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rojo

(Ret)
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

Hey grinnin,

There are tons of such works- the first ones that spring to mind are the Nutcracker suite, and the Messiah (Christmas). I`m sure others will have more to add...
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As for the New World Symphony, I love that work any time of year! Especially the first mvt.
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KBOC

New member
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

Music for Thanksgiving:

Aaron Copeland's Variations on a Shaker Tune
Basil Poledouris' Anvil of Crom for carving the turkey
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(just kidding)

But in all seriousness, I did a google and came up with this article on Thanksgiving...

source
WHERE IS THE MUSIC OF THANKSGIVING?

You know Thanksgiving is coming when you hear Christmas music.

Really, it isn't fair. Thanksgiving is one of the year's best holidays, but it is musically ... uh ... undernourished. It is a great holiday not only because it is theoretically dedicated to the most heartwarming of human emotions, gratitude and recognition, but even more because it always falls on a Thursday. Still, it needs some great music.

In the last century, we have begun moving as many holidays as we can to Monday; this gives people a three-day weekend, which they like, and it avoids the kind of disruption you get when a business shuts down for a day in the middle of the week.

But Thanksgiving is even better than Memorial Day or Presidents' Day or Veterans' Day for a lot of us because it always happens on Thursday. For all students and for a lot of nine-to-five workers, that means a four-day weekend. And we can all use one of those now and again, particularly if we are going off to Grandma's to get overstuffed.

So, if it's such a great holiday, quick name me a universally beloved piece of Thanksgiving music. All right; musicologists can come up with some pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, maybe "Cantata 192," Nun danket alle Gott, but that isn't even in the Bach top-40, let alone the classical top-40, the way Handel's Messiah is. It is not part of people's lives, like "Silent Night" or "Deck the Halls." It is not a beloved tradition like Amahl and the Night Visitors or (in some places) Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ or Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols.

Somebody might mention that "Gloria in excelsis Deo," ("Glory to God in the highest"), which has been set to music by nearly everyone who ever composed for a chorus, is really a hymn of praise and thanksgiving - but it is a Christmas hymn, originally attributed to a choir of angels hovering over Bethlehem.

If you want to stretch the point a little, the Mass, which has been set to music thousands of times, is really a prayer of thanksgiving. It is called the "Eucharist" by theologians, and "eucharist" ("evkharisto," as it is pronounced today) is the Greek way of saying "thank you." But that is only a generic form of thanks, with no particular connection to a Thursday in November.

There are problems for anyone who decides to compose a piece of music for Thanksgiving - rather than one, say, for Christmas. For one thing, the observance of Thanksgiving is limited to one day per year - followed, as a rule, by several days of cold turkey - while the celebration of Christmas now seems to begin shortly after Labor Day. This means not only that there are a lot more opportunities to hear and perform Christmas music; it also means that the natural time for enjoying Thanksgiving music - the latter part of November - has already been captured by herald angels, jingle bells and red-nosed reindeer.

That is not entirely an accident, of course. Thanksgiving was originally established in New England by the Pilgrim Fathers not only as a way of thanking God for a good harvest but also as a kind of competitor for Christmas. They thought the observance of Christmas had become contaminated with paganism (they should see what it's like today!) and they hoped that a celebration coming a month before it might take away some of its impact. They didn't win that battle, though they did establish a permanent spot for their contender. They might have had better luck if they had gotten somebody to write a few good tunes for their holiday, but the Pilgrim Fathers really weren't very interested in music.

So we have a holiday with lots of good cheer but not much music - at least, not much on the level of Bach's Christmas Oratorio or even "Good King Wenceslaus." One problem, perhaps, is that Christmas had a big head start on Thanksgiving - 16 centuries, give or take a few decades - and its observance was spread through a variety of cultures and continents, sinking into people's subconscious awareness and generating all kinds of folklore spinoffs. So perhaps 1600 years from now, Thanksgiving will have acquired that kind of cultural patina.

It's partly a question of mystique. Christmas is, at least for believers, a subject of mystery, a celebration of the birth of a miraculous child, an instance of God reaching out to touch humanity. Thanksgiving can be (and for many of us is) no more than an excuse for overindulgence and a chance to watch football games.

But it is also a feast of mysticism and contemplation, a time - even now, in the midst of mourning over our great national tragedy - for reflection on how we have been favored; a time to express our recognition that some force larger than ourselves has, looked down upon us in our present sorrow and treated us kindly. That is a subject for great music.

16 November 2001
 

Grinnin

New member
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

Good article, KBOC. Thanks for posting it. It's true. There isn't much music out there for Thanksgiving. Well, not yet anyway. I'm getting some good ideas from the comments here about things to add to my "line up".
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Anyone have any music that makes them think of Halloween? (I gotta think about that one.)
 

KBOC

New member
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

Soundtrack from Holloween? (John Carpenter wrote it, btw...)

or Tocatta & Fugue in D Minor (Bach) comes to mind as well
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rojo

(Ret)
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

How about Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky? And the Sorcerer`s Apprentice by Dukas. Maybe parts of Orff`s Carmina Burana also??
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Todd

New member
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

It's pretty hard not to associate William Henry Fry's Santa Claus Symphony with Christmas.
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
Re: Are there any classical works that you connect with a holida

How about the 1812 Overture for the 4th of July? Every time I go to outdoor orchestra concerts with fireworks on the 4th, they play the 1812 Overture for the start of the fireworks.
 

lvbeethovenizhott

New member
I suppose I could blame the connection on London Symphony Orchestra (not sure who is the "best" the world has to offer with Orchestras (another thread?) but I sure do enjoy this every time (I wonder how Handel would handle it if he could hear it?:grin:)

(Do we have a christmas music thread anywhere?)

http://www.rhapsody.com/player?type...ageregion=&guid=&from=&hasrhapx=false&__pcode=

London Symphony Orchestra (A Classic Christmas-2001)
"Joy To The World"

cheers

L
 

Tûrwethiel

New member
I always associate Mr Bach's St Matthew Passion with Easter as, years ago, I used to spend half of Good Friday playing it in St Andrews Cathedral.
 

sunwaiter

New member
i don't know or understand any of the holy days on the calendar, and it still amazes me since i'm a descendant of a very catholic family.

i connect some classical pieces with other moments of my life, like anyone who listens to music.
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Aloha sunwaiter,

Its sad to hear that you do not understand any of the Holy days on the calendar despite your being a descendant of a very Catholic family. Since you have made such a categorical statement I must then surmise that you are content with your ignorance of these matters, n'est-ce pas?

Humbly,

CD :):):)
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Aloha sunwaiter,

I can only say WOW!!! You live in such a cultural capitol like Paris and you harbor such thoughts - Might you have lost the will to really live and contribute to the cultural fabric of Europe besides being a DJ?

Just wondering...
 

sunwaiter

New member
i don't give much importance to DJ'ing, though i appreciate this kind of practice.

to be more specific and clearer about religion or in more general terms, religious culture, and in order to give you a more flattering image of me, i must say this:

as i wrote it in several posts now, you know i tolerate every form of faith. and you know i'm a convinced atheist, though i also know that nothing is still forever ( we are ALL concerned by this remark), everything is susceptible of change. neo-nazi violent youth don't turn into good people only in movies, people who always hated ravioli may find it succulent one day. well, it's not a scoop to you, i won't be too long with this.

i understand that interpretation and good use of the holy books or any source of moral, social, or cultural value is also a part of the thing, and the modest context in which my mother and my father have grown can explain many things about what they think of religion. to sum it up, they lost all their sunday mornings. Now i know that people like you, Corno, are involved in a different way and i'm sure you do take the best of what you have learned, or what you've been told, because reading your posts is always interesting and i'm convinced you are a very open-minded man; you can't be no sheep.

now paris is a place of culture indeed. i made my own culture without the help of my parents. but school has made so little in this culture, which is like yours always growing, even tiny bit by tiny bits. culture is made of what you choose or not to learn, but it's better when you choose it. sometimes it's good to be enlightnened by others, but when it comes to religion, even just as some data to put in my brain, i get like an allergy. Notre dame is a beautiful construction, saint sulpice too, and all the other churches, cathedrals you can find here. my roots are bathing in christian traditions. we always had joyful christmas in our family, when we could be together on the same continent. but i never felt the need to know lots of things about "holy" days. i don't need this to "really live". this sounds odd coming from you, even a little bit scary, but don' take no offence please. honest, i'm sure you mean me good only. i don't know what is the "cultural fabric of europe" (you will explain it to me), though i can imagine there is some sort of european idendity. but anyway i don't think in such terms.

i care a lot more about DJ'ing than the calendar.

calendar makes me think of frank zappa's "the adventures of greggary peccary". do you know this piece of music?

back to topic: my favourite christmas (! :)) was when there was "kingston town" by UB40 on the radio.
 

jhnbrbr

New member
This may sound silly, but I have a strong association between (UK) roads and music, which relates to the road I was driving on when I was getting to know the piece. For example, the M69 has strong Dvorak symphonic connections for me, also Dorian toccatta and fugue, Franck's Symphonic Variations put me on the M50 heading for Newport, South Wales, and Mozart's Requiem takes me back to the Orkney Islands. Does anyone else share this peculiarity - or am I just bonkers?
 

jawoodruff

New member
As a composer, I find the holiday season is a wonderful inspirational time. My favorite piece to listen to is Mozart's Requiem.
 
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