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Reviews
OPERA
Ups and Downs
By John Bender
San Francisco Opera
Eugene Onegin
(11/27/04)
SYMPHONY
Brilliant Sounds
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Mixed Effect
LETTER FROM L.A.
All That Glitters
MUSIC NEWS
Opera On a Shoestring
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 11/23/04 Question of the Week
By Jerry Kuderna
San Francisco Symphony
Simon Trpceski
Yan Pascal Tortelier
(11/27/04)
By Heuwell Tircuit
Cypress Quartet
(11/23/04)
By Alan Rich
By Janos Gereben
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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Ah, yes, 'tis The Season. You aren't allowed to forget it — at least, not if you leave your home, and sometimes not even if you don't. The nameless person who decreed the day after Thanksgiving the official start of the Christmas Season escapes infamy by oblivion: we don't know whom to curse. But I knew the annual onslaught was upon us when I walked into my local grocery store on Friday and heard the ghastliest "O Tanenbaum" in living memory, soulfully pulled around and puffed out, and seemingly endless. And there's lots more where it came from. At times like this, it's difficult not to wish that the Infant Jesus would just run along and play, already.
But The Season brings better things than that in its wake. Easter is the central Christian holiday, but it's around Christmas that the more remarkable music seems to have gathered. (And I'm not even counting Easter music more or less requisitioned for Christmas, like Messiah — about which more in a moment.) Easter itself is triumph pure and simple; the great music for Holy Week is all about the Passion, not the Resurrection, torment winning through to glory, but with the accent firmly on the torment. Christmas is something else again: travail, mystery, humility, portents of joy, portents of sorrow, the central conundrum of a helpless baby who is also the unknown strength that sustains the stars (as I think Chesterton put it). You'd have positively to fight composers off to keep them from such a rich theme.
The great Christmas music is all about innocence and power, the humble raised up, the weak and tiny exalted. Not many composers try to fit in more than that. There are exceptions, of course. There is, for example, a piece ("Hor ch'è tempo di domire" [Now it is time to sleep], a "canzonetta spirituale") by Tarquinio Merula that is one of the strongest works of the 17th century, for all its slender means. It's just a two-note bassline and a voice: Mary singing a lullaby to her son, lamenting all the things that are going to happen to him, imagining her child's face spat upon and his side wounded by a spear and his little hands and feet pierced by nails.
Very powerful music, that; but not Christmas music. The notes of Christmas music are innocence and mirth, tempered where necessary by mild doses of sheer silliness.
This is where the classical-music Christmas contingent has it all over the Muzak variety. I can imagine a solemn, processional-sounding "O Tanenbaum" from a classical ensemble, or a jaunty, up-tempo one, but never the smarmy concoction I heard over the Safeway-waves Friday. Classical musicians of all centuries are rather good at innocence, mirth, and silliness — especially the last, naturally; which is to say that even the staunch atheists among them do "get" Christmas in a way that the Muzak-purveyors don't. So if you want to cleanse your ears of the latter, you have only to try a classical Christmas concert or two.
A look at the December concert calendar gives some idea of the wealth of Christmas music out there. The Tallis Scholars (12/3, Berkeley) and Chanticleer (12/11-13 and further) mine the Renaissance repertoire, though Chanticleer supplements it, as ever, with traditional carols and spirituals. Sacred and Profane (12/4 & 12/11-12) is doing Victoria's O magnum mysterium Mass in liturgical context. Meanwhile, the indefatigable Warren Stewart takes on the Christmas theme from a couple of sides with two ensembles: a Michael Praetorius program with the California Bach Society (12/3-5), and a Rovetta "Christmas Vespers" (Rovetta was Monteverdi's assistant in Venice, and a very fine composer) with Magnificat (12/17-19).
But then, you have always the option of singing yourself. Reader Carl Anderson sends a list of Bay Area Messiah Sings:
- UC Berkeley (12/3/04, 7 p.m., Hertz Hall, $15 donation)
click here - Brentwood (12/4/04 4 p.m., Liberty Performing Arts Ctr, 850 Second St.; info 925 634-3521) (per Contra Costa Times)
- UUCB (Kensington) (12/5/04, 6 p.m., $10 donation)
click here - Davies Hall, SF (12/6/04; tix 415 864-6000)
- St. Raphael's Church in San Rafael (12/12/04; 415.567-2020 x 213 for info)
- Redwood Empire (formerly at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, but this year in the Santa Rosa High School Auditorium) (12/15/04, $15)
click here - Piedmont Community Church, 400 Highland (12/16/04, 7:15)
click here
I've played my share of Messiah Sings (well, is twenty or so a proper "share"?), and I can attest to the quality and quantity of fun had by all. If you can read music, get ye to a music store and pick up a vocal score of Messiah if you don't already own one; and then take yourself to one of the above venues and bellow to your heart's content. It'll do you good.
(Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.)
©2004 Michelle Dulak Thomson, all rights reserved
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