Your Daily Dose of Christmas

An eternal favorite. Judy Garland's performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is, for me, so iconic that I can barely stand any others. (Insert my usual rant about Frank Sinatra destroying the song's meaning by changing the lyrics here.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

From King's College in London, here is "O Holy Night".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Victor Herbert's "March of the Toys".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Well, seeing as how nuclear annihilation seems to be back on the table as an option, here's Weird Al and "Christmas At Ground Zero".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I first heard this piece by John Rutter performed by the local high school choir at a Christmas concert a few years ago. It is, quite simply, one of the most achingly beautiful pieces I have ever heard. Here is the Candlelight Carol.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Several different versions of "The Little Drummer Boy". Which do you prefer?

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

This piece isn't performed by the Canadian Brass, even though it's titled "A Canadian Brass Christmas Suite". Nevertheless, it's pretty cool.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

A few Christmas selections by Yo Yo Ma (and whichever friends he brings along)!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Here's one I play each year in acknowledgement of Christmas's way of making us think, amidst the joy and light and gift-giving, of the loves that might have been, the lives we might have lived, and the dreams that sometimes we barely remember dreaming.

Bad Joke Friday (Christmas edition)

Apologies! I genuinely thought I had already scheduled this to post, but it turned out that I didn't do anything at all with it. So....

BWAAA HAAA HAHAHA oh never mind.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

The United States military is home to some really good musicians, and they do a lot more than just play "Hail to the Chief" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever".

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

A Christmas Overture by John Rutter. Rutter is mainly known for his melodic and lyrical choral music, but this is quite nice. (Rutter will likely turn up again this month.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I love John Williams, obviously, but I do have to admit that I prefer his music to have a darker tinge to it. When he gets into full-on "happy" mode, I find that...well, it's like eating a very rich and very sweet dessert. A little goes a long way.

This is a suite someone cobbled together out of several Christmas-related tracks from Williams film scores. And just in case you need some "darker" Williams after that, well, go to YouTube and dig up any track from Revenge of the Sith. That should do it!

Tone Poem Tuesday

A break from the Christmas music! Here we have the Welsh Rhapsody by Sir Edward German, a composer who lived from 1862 to 1936. He is most well-known for several of his light operas, as he was seen during his career as something of a successor to Sir Arthur Sullivan. German lived a long enough life to see the musical style that he favored fall out of fashion, and like many fine composers, his work fell into neglect and obscurity. This piece does not deserve that fate, though -- it is a thoroughly enjoyable work of late-Romantic orchestral writing, thrilling and lyrical and muscular. Enjoy!

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

One of my every-year favorites. Here is Tchaikovsky's Suite from The Nutcracker.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

In Generations, the first Star Trek movie to feature the cast of The Next Generation, the plot involves an evil scientist whose goal is to do whatever he needs to do to get back into "the Nexus", which is some kind of alternate dimension where wishes are fulfilled or some such thing. The whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense, but late in the movie Captain Picard finds himself there, and his temptation to remain is a Very English Christmas that looks like something out of one of the rich family scenes in a Dickens novel. Not much to write home about, really, but Dennis McCarthy's scoring of this dream-like sequence is interesting ethereal.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

I don't know anything at all about the band Sixpence None the Richer, but I gave a random listen to their rendition of my favorite Christmas hymn, "Angels We Have Heard On High", and...well, hear it for yourself. I quite fancied it.

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli wrote this wonderful concerto grosso and inscribed it: "Made for the Night of Christmas. It's not known exactly when he wrote it; it survives because of its publication in a posthumous collection of all of Corelli's concerti grossi. In a concerto grosso, the music alternates between being performed by a group of soloists within a larger ensemble and by the entire ensemble itself. At this point in music history the concerto had not yet developed into a showpiece for soloist with orchestra.

There are no familiar Christmas tunes here, but I always find that the intimate sound of various chamber ensembles lends itself to the more peaceful and contemplative aspects of Christmas.

Bad Joke Friday (Christmas Edition)

All of this month's Bad Jokes will be themed to the upcoming holiday. Enjoy! (Or not. Because the jokes will still be bad.)

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

It's December, so here we go with our daily roundup of Christmas favorites old and new!