There are always plenty of Christmas-music roundups this time of year. This one's different. The others usually focus on the newest offerings. Nothing I've gotten this year has really struck a chord, but there is no shortage of favorites from years past that have proven their merits and held up over time. It is those in the classical realm, where trends matter least; and choral, because it's sacred choir music that's at the heart of the celebration of Christmas, that are listed below.
Ancient
If you want some Christmas music you don't already know by heart, just look further back in history.The early music movement of the past half-century has unearthed many long-forgotten masterpieces from the Medieval and Renaissance eras.
Sequentia: Aquitania: Christmas Music from Aquitanian Monasteries (12th century) (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)
This was Sequentia's second album of Aquitanian Christmas season music, following on the heels of the much-praised Shining Light.
Ancient
If you want some Christmas music you don't already know by heart, just look further back in history.The early music movement of the past half-century has unearthed many long-forgotten masterpieces from the Medieval and Renaissance eras.
Sequentia: Aquitania: Christmas Music from Aquitanian Monasteries (12th century) (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)
This was Sequentia's second album of Aquitanian Christmas season music, following on the heels of the much-praised Shining Light.
- 12/24/2015
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
The son of a vicar (and Charles Darwin was his great-uncle), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) became one of the most popular English composers. He studied under Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry at the Royal College of Music, but also read history and music at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he palled around with the philosophers Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore. He also went to Germany for lessons with Max Bruch, but ultimately rejected the 19th century German Romantic style Friendships with fellow Rcm students Gustav Holst and Leopold Stokowski later bore more fruit, in different ways: Stokowski, who moved to the United States, became Rvw's biggest supporter there; Holst and Vaughan Williams critiqued each others' work and joined in the study and collection of English folk songs. "The knowledge of our folk songs did not so much discover for us something new, but uncovered something which had been hidden by foreign matter,...
- 10/12/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
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