Winter Themed Music – The best of the best
Author: Blogger in Residence, Anna Disley-Simpson
‘Tis the season! I KNOW it’s November still but I’m fully ready for all things festive, having recently written two Christmas Carols of my own. So I’m here this week to break down what is, granted, entirely in my own opinion, some of the best Winter and Christmas themed music out there. So, grab a warming beverage and put on an obnoxiously garish jumper, because it’s about to get frosty…
To ease us in we have Des pas sur la neige, a piece from Debussy’s first book of preludes. Translating as ‘footprints in the snow’, the piece is thought to have been inspired by a painting of a snowy landscape. Whilst the piece never modulates from its key of D minor, over the course of the piece’s 36 bars Debussy explores both the Mixolydian and Dorian modes as well as the whole tone scale, resulting in an ethereal wash of harmony and a beautifully delicate sound world.
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is a set of concerti that is often on a classical musician’s radar from a very young age. We hear it all the time in Television, Film, and even out and about to the point where almost anyone can recognise it. However, my appreciation for this wildly celebrated work has increased ten-fold having experienced the interpretation of Henning Kraggerud, star violinist and Artistic Director of the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra. The energetic lustre exuding from this particular performance is truly arresting, I’m a huge fan. We all know the first movement of Winter as a powerfully striking passage of music, where here in the APO’s recording the ‘icy’ quality is expertly achieved. But my personal favourite is the warmth of the second movement, which charmingly captures the feeling of being inside by a fire whilst the trepidatious weather howls outside.
The next piece is Schnee (translation: ‘Snow’) by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen, a set of five pairs of canons, with three thoughtfully placed ‘Intermezzo’ movements. The pairs “mirror each other in their counterpoint and texture, with the qualities of one half being reflected – often distorted – in the other” (Gramophone), and the piece is a great example of how composers can strategically place performers to achieve certain antiphonal stereo effects (see below). Abrahamsen ruthlessly limits his tonal palette in these canons to achieve what he refers to as ‘white polyphony’, evocative of snow itself. The resultant effect is an all-encompassing soundworld where one can almost lucidly experience the sensation of how it feels to set foot in crisp, dusty snow and feels totally hypnotic every time I hear it.
The Kantos Chamber Choir is one of my favourite choirs I’ve ever been able to sing with. Based in Manchester and directed by Ellie Slorach, they often put on innovative and exciting performances championing a great deal of new and experimental music. They have released an album entitled The Silver Stars at Play, a collection of 23 extremely varied contemporary Christmas carol settings.
My current favourite piece on the album is Cheryl Camm’s Cantate Domino, a shining example of exuberant rhythmic writing in a landscape where a lot of Christmas music can rely so heavily on sentimentality and ‘mush’. Kantos also hold a Carol Competition each year, of which the deadline is today at midnight (!), which is a truly fabulous opportunity for any composer.
Lastly, I have to mention Juice Vocal Ensemble’s Snow Queens album. This collection of specifically commissioned new music for three upper voices include works and arrangements by the members themselves (Anna Snow, Sarah Dacey, and Kerry Andrew) as well as by a wide selection of esteemed composers exemplifying some truly expertly executed vocal writing. The crowning glory of the collection for me is Emily Hall’s haunting piece 4.05. Emily’s music perfectly captures the painful tenderness of the text by Agnieszka Dale and showcases the strengths of each individual voice through the use of simple but refined musical gestures.
Listen to these pieces plus many more of my festive favourites here!
Promo time! My first commission as the London Oriana Choir’s Composer in Residence is being performed in their concert ‘A December Song’ on both the 16th and the 21st of December. The piece, iceshining, glittering ice, uses text from The Snow Queen and can be summarised with the following performance note: “This music should sound fragile and crystalline. Sing as if the sound were coming from the tips of freezing cold fingers. The phrases should float like a slow icy mist. The unvocalised ‘hahhh’ sound from the tenors and basses later on in the piece should sound as if one was trying to steam up a cold window, or trying to see if your breath is visible in the outside winter air.” Tickets for the concert can be bought here.
Written by Anna Disley-Simpson