'Tis the season...

It's that time of year again, I'm afraid, and there's something I can't put off any longer. I have to make the same plea I always do: Please enjoy your Christmas music in moderation.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't hate Christmas music on principle; in fact there are some wonderfully atmospheric and well-composed songs, carols and oratorios which, on the whole, bear the test of time. I'd just like to not hear the same music on a continuous loop all day, every day, thanks.

I will admit to being particularly intolerant to excessive repetition in general, but there is (mercifully) no other occasion in the calender when the canon of agitated air molecules filling our ears is even half so strictly regulated. Easter, the other great once-primarily-religious-now-swallowed-up-in-a-frenzy-of-enforced-consumerism festival, has somehow never spawned any memorable tunes suitable for incessant reproduction (although there are Easter carols, and various hymns that get trotted out on the appropriate Sunday, but heard literally once a year). Bunnies, chocolate eggs and crucifixion seem so far to have failed to produce any musical treatment capable of capturing the public's attention. But come late (or even early) November, the diet of muzak emanating from shops, televisions and stereos turns wearily predictable. Even the otherwise beautiful Carols from Kings (which we have to watch, and then listen to the Christmas Day repeat in the car going up to visit the grandparents) is based around the same core of tunes, although happily with the addition of more underperformed items in between.

What is worse is that this season of goodwill towards men produces not only broken records but often a concerted attempt to make them as annoying and cliché-ridden as possible. As religion is a bit of a commercial no-no in this country, song lyrics tend to revisit vapid consumerist topics and/or sentimental mush - the more 'cringeable' the better. Proponents of the powerful pro-Christmas lobby have developed a method of shutting down any voices opposing this, namely to cry 'Scrooge!' at the slightest whiff of dissent. Whilst it can often be effective, this tactic, frankly, is avoiding the issue.

Before I give the impression I'm training the majority of my fire on commercial pop music, I'm sad to say that successive years of invariance in programming have all but regulated Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, not even a Christmas piece (and neither is two-thirds of Messiah, in fact) into the same category . Yes, I know you want to hear the Hallajujah Chorus again, because we've all forgotten how it goes in just twelve months. Yes, I understand that hearing a similar and possibly equally good work by either composer this year will not do, because that would go against tradition. My dislike (well, relatively speaking) of these pieces is simply a result of the fact that I've had to play their continuo parts year in, year out, often more than once a season.

Particular lowlights of the season include:

Away in a Manger: Now, I don't have children, so I cannot verify if seeing one's offspring singing this together with their peers in the nativity play would, in fact, move me sufficiently to value its creation. It is not, in my opinion, a very good tune, certainly not good enough to warrant three verses. Part of the problem is that the little angels learn the words syllabicly, so that the text of the carol ends up sounding something like 'Ahh-WAY-yin a-ah-main-jer no-OH crib-four-ra bed...' It also has a very dull bass line, which with the voice and instruments I play is understandably not a good tactic for trying to endear me to it.

Merry Christmas Everybody (Slade): Not actually a lot wrong with the song in itself, but, rather like Copland, marred by cheap imitations of it - in this case your mates 'singing' along to it post-pint. The end of the chorus glissandi-coupled-with-an-unexpected-move-to-chord-VI (ie the bit that goes 'It's only just begu-uu-uu-uuuuuun!') is particularly ill-advised for this sort of inebriated karaoke as very few are able to complete the manoeuvre with tuning unscathed. Generally the accuracy resembles that of attempting an Olympic ski slalom in a motorhome. That said, the sound of Noddy Holder crying aloft 'It's Christmassssss!' in the song's closing stages will give me sleepless nights forever.

Let it Snow: Isn't the opening little flute/glockenspiel duet just the most horribly twee phrase ever committed to vinyl? Perfectly formulated to send into a rage anyone who has just watched their decorations tumble mockingly to the floor, having spent twenty minutes on tip-toes up a ladder smothering them in dusty blu-tack.

Synthesised bells/chimes in pop songs: Inevitably heard as a descending scale in the tackyist pop offerings, in blissful ignorance of the fact that real church bells were often rung to announce war, pestilence and famine. Few crimes against music can match the tastelessness of this needless filigree...

...except, perhaps, (sometimes also synthesised) sleigh bells. We may all have enjoyed playing Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride in a junior school arrangement (could your trumpeter do that horse bit at the end either?), but the incessant ching-ching-ching in aforementioned pop songs with cheap production values is also an irritant the strength of industrial grout cleaner. Be very careful should anyone you meet think this is at all charming; they may also like Jedward and believe that Fearne Cotton would make an excellent elected representative. It goes without saying that 'Jingle Bells' is also something I would like not to ever know of again.

So please, be discerning and tasteful in your choice of seasonal soundtrack, and dig out something unusual and interesting to hear this year. And consider supporting the 'John Cage's 4'33" for No.1' campaign...

Win

My arrangement of The First Nowell I mentioned a while back is going to be performed tomorrow night, at Andover Choral Society's Christmas concert at St Mary's Church in the town. It also features the Bach Mag, Finzi's In Terra Pax and Dyson's Three Songs of Praise, and I'm playing in the orchestra as usual. Whilst this isn't worthy of the same level of excitement as the première of an original piece, it's still an outing for some of my work, so, 'win', I guess.