Category Archives: Music

Music

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (1875)

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) is often hailed as Russia’s great­est com­pos­er (from a strong field), and his works epit­o­mise the emo­tion­al depth for which Russ­ian music is known. You might say he was some­thing of a Russ­ian Beethoven, with the same genius for dra­mat­ic inten­si­ty and emo­tion­al range, and indeed Tchaikovsky deeply respect­ed and acknowl­edged Beethoven. Although his true love was in fact Mozart, it is Beethoven’s influ­ence that is evi­dent in his com­po­si­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly his lat­er sym­phonies such as his Sixth Sym­pho­ny, the Pathé­tique, with its explo­ration of melan­cho­lia. Today, how­ev­er, I’m high­light­ing his remark­able Piano Con­cer­to No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23.

It’s one of those tunes from the world of clas­si­cal music which you instant­ly recog­nise when you hear it even if you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know it from its title. It was com­posed dur­ing the sev­er­al months lead­ing up to Feb­ru­ary 1875 and first per­formed in Octo­ber of that year, in Boston, by pianist Hans von Bülow. It was to become one of the best known piano con­cer­ti of all time and in a nut­shell it is a sub­lime piece of music. Strange then, that it should have been so round­ly slat­ed by the man who Tchaikovsky had orig­i­nal­ly want­ed to play it before approach­ing von Bülow, name­ly Niko­lai Rubin­stein.

As the sto­ry is relat­ed, Tchaikovsky invit­ed Rubin­stein to the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry to demo his com­po­si­tion, just three days after com­plet­ing it. Full of antic­i­pa­tion and hope that Rubin­stein would be blown away and agree to play it, Tchaikovsky sat at the piano and played the first move­ment. To Tchaikovsky’s cha­grin not a sin­gle word was spo­ken and after a peri­od of silence he could stand it no more: “Well?” he said, to which Rubinstein’s tact­less and rather bru­tal response is described in Tchaikovsky’s own words:

“It turned out that my con­cer­to was worth­less and unplayable; pas­sages were so frag­ment­ed, so clum­sy, so bad­ly writ­ten that they were beyond res­cue; the work itself was bad, vul­gar; in places I had stolen from oth­er com­posers; only two or three pages were worth pre­serv­ing; the rest must be thrown away or com­plete­ly rewrit­ten.” Rubin­stein went on to say “that if I reworked the con­cer­to accord­ing to his demands, then he would do me the hon­our of play­ing my thing at his con­cert. ‘I shall not alter a sin­gle note,’ I answered, ‘I shall pub­lish the work exact­ly as it is!’”.

You can only imag­ine the indig­na­tion Tchaikovsky must have felt at that cut­ting cri­tique. And that’s why Tchaikovsky approached von Bülow to play it…

Post­script: Rubin­stein changed his opin­ion of the piece and became a big fan (you know what it’s like, you some­times need to hear an album three or four times before prop­er­ly appre­ci­at­ing it), and final­ly even played it, with gus­to, in Moscow, St Peters­burg and Paris, in 1878.

Let’s hear the open­ing four min­utes as played by the sev­en­teen-year-old prodi­gy Evge­ny Kissin, under the direc­tion of Her­bert von Kara­jan and the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, Salzburg 1988.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Music

Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting (1985)

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Kate Bush is noth­ing if not inno­v­a­tive. She burst onto the scene in 1978, aged nine­teen, with her debut sin­gle Wuther­ing Heights. Whilst the rest of the charts were pop­u­lat­ed either by the new gen­er­a­tion of punk and new wave or the old gen­er­a­tion of dis­co and soft rock, here was Kate singing the­atri­cal­ly about a Vic­to­ri­an nov­el and danc­ing ethe­re­al­ly on Top of the Pops. The nation was strange­ly hooked and it went to num­ber one (and no doubt Emi­ly Brontë’s Wuther­ing Heights expe­ri­enced a boost in sales at the same time).

Kate had been writ­ing songs for years, hav­ing grown up in a music-lov­ing house­hold in Kent, and had record­ed a bunch of them on demo tapes. One of these tapes found its way into the hands of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour who imme­di­ate­ly recog­nised the song-writ­ing tal­ent and oth­er-world­ly vocals. He encour­aged Floyd’s label EMI to sign her up, which they duly did. She was six­teen and still at school so she con­tin­ued her stud­ies, honed her craft, learned inter­pre­tive dance under chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Lind­say Kemp, and in the inter­ests of good research read Wuther­ing Heights (she had writ­ten the song before actu­al­ly read­ing the book, hav­ing caught the back end of a BBC TV adap­ta­tion of it). And the rest, as they say, is his­to­ry — she went on to record nine stu­dio albums all of which reached the UK Top 10, and recent­ly enjoyed some­thing of a renais­sance fol­low­ing the use of her song Run­ning up that Hill in the Net­flix block­buster series Stranger Things.

Cloud­bust­ing remains my favourite Kate Bush song. If the record-buy­ing pub­lic thought that the sub­ject mat­ter of Wuther­ing Heights was some­what quirky, it hadn’t seen noth­ing yet. The song took inspi­ra­tion from the 1973 mem­oirs of Peter Reich (Book of Dreams), writ­ten about his close rela­tion­ship with his father the psy­chi­a­trist and inven­tor Wil­helm Reich, at their farm named “Orgonon”, in Maine. Wil­helm Reich had been exper­i­ment­ing with a cos­mic ener­gy which he termed orgone, and had built devices called orgone accu­mu­la­tors which he claimed could cure can­cers and pro­mote health. Lat­er he would build a rain-mak­ing machine called a cloud­buster and father and son would spend hours on their farm point­ing it at the sky and try­ing to make rain. Like all pro­mot­ers of fringe ideas (ask Niko­la Tes­la), Reich even­tu­al­ly fell foul of the author­i­ties, was impris­oned, and had his inven­tions and ideas sup­pressed.

Kate’s musi­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of the sto­ry is out­stand­ing. It is at once mes­mer­ic with its mantra-like back­ing vocals and hyp­not­ic cel­lo strokes, and a mas­ter­class in sto­ry-telling with its set­ting of the scene from the very first line “I dream of Orgonon”. That line, with that word, had such an intrigu­ing feel to it, long before I dis­cov­ered its true back sto­ry. The video accom­pa­ny­ing the sin­gle, is genius: a mas­ter­stroke cast­ing of Don­ald Suther­land as the father, and Kate her­self with a pix­ie cut to stand in for the son. The “cloud­buster” itself, designed by the same peo­ple who designed the “xenomorph” for Rid­ley Scott’s Alien, is a won­der­ful steam-punk inven­tion. After Reich’s arrest, we see Kate/Peter tak­ing over the reins and achiev­ing suc­cess with his father’s inven­tions – I don’t know how true this is, but at least Kate was grat­i­fied that the real Peter Reich hailed the video and said it cap­tured the sit­u­a­tion and the emo­tion per­fect­ly. Watch and enjoy here…

Kate Bush
Music

Greg Lake’s I Believe In Father Christmas (1975)

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We all have our favourite Christ­mas songs. Most of these we like through sheer tra­di­tion – songs like Slade’s Mer­ry Christ­mas Every­body (1973) or Paul McCartney’s Won­der­ful Christ­mas­time (1979) are just as part of the Christ­mas land­scape, ingrained by sheer rep­e­ti­tion, as Christ­mas trees and Father Christ­mas. I have delved into Spo­ti­fy to explore Christ­mas songs from way back, many of which you no longer hear on the radio but which nonethe­less are often very enjoy­able – check out Kay Starr’s (Everybody’s Wait­in’ for) The Man with the Bag (1950) or Mitch Miller’s Must Be San­ta (1960) to name just two wor­thy old clas­sics (I’m also a fan of Bob Dylan’s cov­er of the lat­ter).

How­ev­er, the Christ­mas song that res­onates the most with me remains Greg Lake’s glo­ri­ous debut solo sin­gle in 1975, I Believe in Father Christ­mas. It man­ages to encap­su­late the required Christ­mas mag­ic whilst remain­ing a great piece of music in its own right. Greg Lake wrote the song ini­tial­ly with a view to protest­ing at the com­mer­cial­isaton of Christ­mas, but the lyrics pro­vid­ed by King Crim­son co-founder Pete Sin­field brought it back on track as a pic­ture-post­card Christ­mas song (albeit with a theme of lost inno­cence as the nar­ra­tor “saw through the dis­guise” and seems a bit dis­grun­tled about bro­ken promis­es regard­ing snow and peace on Earth, but nev­er mind).

The instru­men­tal melody between the vers­es comes from the “Troi­ka” por­tion of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieu­tenant Kijé Suite, writ­ten for the 1934 Sovi­et film of the same name, and pro­vides a very Christ­massy, sleigh­bell-heavy motif. This was added at the sug­ges­tion of Greg’s band­mate from ELP, Kei­th Emer­son, who was no stranger to incor­po­rat­ing themes and motifs from clas­si­cal music. An orches­tra and choir were added too, con­tribut­ing to an ebul­lient musi­cal finale. The song was record­ed at Abbey Road stu­dios, and the video was shot on the Sinai Penin­su­la of Egypt, and in the West Bank.

The song was released in Novem­ber 1975 and got to num­ber two in the UK sin­gles chart, held off the num­ber one slot by a cer­tain Bohemi­an Rhap­sody by Queen. Lake com­ment­ed: “I got beat­en by one of the great­est records ever made. I would’ve been pissed off if I’d been beat­en by Cliff (Richard).”

Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Greg Lake
Music

The Animals’ The House Of The Rising Sun (1964)

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If you’re a music his­to­ry enthu­si­ast, hours of fun can be had perus­ing the Roud Folk Song Index (https://archives.vwml.org/search/roud), the online data­base of around a quar­ter of a mil­lion ref­er­ences to near­ly 25,000 songs col­lect­ed from oral tra­di­tion in the Eng­lish lan­guage from all over the world, and named after its com­pil­er Steve Roud. It cor­re­lates ver­sions of tra­di­tion­al folk song lyrics inde­pen­dent­ly doc­u­ment­ed over past cen­turies by many dif­fer­ent col­lec­tors across the UK and North Amer­i­ca. Take Roud num­ber 6393, for instance: The House of the Ris­ing Sun.

Although wide­ly known from the most suc­cess­ful con­tem­po­rary ver­sion, record­ed by the Ani­mals in 1964, The House of the Ris­ing Sun is a tra­di­tion­al folk song with deep roots: it was first col­lect­ed in Appalachia in the 1930s, but prob­a­bly goes back much fur­ther, ema­nat­ing from the tra­di­tion of so-called “broad­side bal­lads”. A “broad­side” was a sheet of cheap paper used between the six­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies to dis­trib­ute news and so on, but also, most pop­u­lar­ly, bal­lads. “Bal­lads” were nar­ra­tive rhymes and songs devel­op­ing from the min­strel­sy of the ear­li­er four­teenth and fif­teenth cen­turies, and which told folk sto­ries on every top­ic under the sun, from leg­ends and heroes and reli­gion to the more pro­sa­ic side of life.

The House of the Ris­ing Sun bal­lad tells of a per­son­’s life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans, and is a clas­sic cau­tion­ary tale, appeal­ing to his lis­ten­ers to avoid the same fate:

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Ris­ing Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I’m one

Folk song col­lec­tor Alan Lomax not­ed that “Ris­ing Sun” was the name of a bawdy house in at least two tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish songs, and a name for Eng­lish pubs (Leeds dwellers may be famil­iar with the one on Kirk­stall Road, albeit now sad­ly dis­used). He hypoth­e­sised that the loca­tion of the said drink­ing hole-cum-broth­el was then sim­ply relo­cat­ed from Eng­land to the US by roam­ing per­form­ers. In 1953, Lomax met Har­ry Cox, an Eng­lish farm labour­er known for his impres­sive folk song reper­toire, who knew a song called She was a Rum One (Roud 2128) with two pos­si­ble open­ing vers­es, one begin­ning:

If you go to Low­est­oft, and ask for The Ris­ing Sun,
There you’ll find two old whores and my old woman is one.

The old­est known record­ing of the song, under the title Ris­ing Sun Blues, is by Appalachi­an artists Tom Ash­ley and Gwen Fos­ter, who record­ed it in 1933. Ash­ley said he had learned it from his grand­fa­ther who had got mar­ried around the time of the Civ­il War, sug­gest­ing that the song was writ­ten years before the turn of the cen­tu­ry.

In 1941, Woody Guthrie record­ed a ver­sion; Lead Bel­ly record­ed two ver­sions in the for­ties; Joan Baez record­ed it in 1960 on her epony­mous debut album; Nina Simone record­ed a ver­sion for the live album Nina at the Vil­lage Gate in 1962; and Bob Dylan record­ed the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. But it was the Ani­mals, Newcastle’s own blues-rock band made up of Eric Bur­don, Alan Price, Chas Chan­dler, Hilton Valen­tine and John Steel, who scored a transat­lantic num­ber one hit sin­gle with it in 1964 and made it their sig­na­ture tune.

The Ani­mals, The House of the Ris­ing Sun

 

Music

John Newton’s Amazing Grace (1772)

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Amaz­ing Grace is one of the most recog­nis­able songs in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world — who hasn’t been exposed count­less times to these icon­ic open­ing lines?

Amaz­ing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see

It was writ­ten in 1772 by Eng­lish Angli­can cler­gy­man John New­ton (1725–1807), drawn very much from per­son­al expe­ri­ence. He had grown up with­out any par­tic­u­lar reli­gious bent and after a time hav­ing been press­ganged into ser­vice with the Roy­al Navy, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. How­ev­er, in 1748 he was on a ves­sel caught up in a storm so vio­lent that he begged God for mer­cy and under­went (hav­ing pre­sum­ably got his feet back on ter­ra fir­ma) some­thing of a spir­i­tu­al con­ver­sion. There­after, New­ton gave up sea­far­ing, stud­ied Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, and became a vocal abo­li­tion­ist. He once was lost but now was found.

New­ton was ordained into the Church of Eng­land in 1764, and took a post as curate at Olney in Buck­ing­hamshire, where he met and began to write hymns with William Cow­per (who him­self would become a cel­e­brat­ed poet and hymnodist). They wrote Amaz­ing Grace to illus­trate a ser­mon New­ton was giv­ing on New Year’s Day 1773 with the mes­sage that for­give­ness and redemp­tion are pos­si­ble regard­less of sins com­mit­ted and that the soul can be deliv­ered from despair through the mer­cy of God. It debuted in print in 1779 in their col­lab­o­ra­tive Olney Hymns.

At this stage, Amaz­ing Grace, like all the oth­er Olney hymns, was still rel­a­tive­ly obscure but it took off in the Unit­ed States when it was picked up and exten­sive­ly used by Bap­tist and Methodist preach­ers dur­ing the Protes­tant revival move­ment of the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry (the so-called Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing). In 1835, Amer­i­can com­pos­er William Walk­er set the words to the tune known as New Britain and this is the ver­sion you’ll hear today.

The song has unsur­pris­ing­ly become a sta­ple of Gospel music, and has also crossed over into sec­u­lar music with a par­tic­u­lar influ­ence in folk music. It’s been record­ed thou­sands of times in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, from Elvis Pres­ley to the Roy­al Scots Dra­goon Guards; today though, I offer a ver­sion by Amer­i­can folk singer Judy Collins, record­ed in 1993 with the Boys’ Choir of Harlem.

John New­ton
Music

Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition (1874)

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The Russ­ian com­pos­er Mod­est Mus­sorgsky (1839–1881) wins my ‘coolest composer’s name’ award, with hon­ourable men­tion to Ger­man com­pos­er Engel­bert Humperdinck (1854–1921) who of course is not to be con­fused with mel­low British pop singer Arnold Dorsey who used Engel­bert Humperdinck as a stage name. Mus­sorgsky was one of the “The Mighty Five” along­side Mily Bal­akirev, César Cui, Alexan­der Borodin, and (anoth­er con­tender for the cool name award) Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov. Togeth­er, these five fash­ioned a dis­tinct nation­al style of Russ­ian clas­si­cal music in the sec­ond half of the 19ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry.

Mussorgsky’s works were inspired by Russ­ian his­to­ry and folk­lore, such as his opera Boris Godunov (about the Tsar who ruled Rus­sia between 1598 and 1605), Night on Bald Moun­tain (a series of com­po­si­tions inspired by Russ­ian lit­er­ary works and leg­ends), and Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion. This lat­ter piece is a piano suite in ten move­ments, writ­ten in 1874, and inspired by an exhi­bi­tion of works by archi­tect and painter Vik­tor Hart­mann at the Impe­r­i­al Acad­e­my of Arts in Saint Peters­burg. Hart­mann was as devot­ed as Mus­sorgsky to mak­ing intrin­si­cal­ly Russ­ian art and the two had become firm friends. Each move­ment of the suite is based on an indi­vid­ual art­work.

Art crit­ic Vladimir Stasov described the piece as Mus­sorgsky “rov­ing through the exhi­bi­tion, now leisure­ly, now briskly in order to come close to a pic­ture that had attract­ed his atten­tion, and at times sad­ly, think­ing of his depart­ed friend.”

The com­po­si­tion has become a show­piece for vir­tu­oso pianists, but has also became wide­ly known from orches­tra­tions and arrange­ments pro­duced by oth­er com­posers, such as Mau­rice Rav­el’s 1922 adap­ta­tion for orches­tra. The excerpt below is the open­ing prom­e­nade from the Rav­el ver­sion, as played by the Nation­al Youth Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall, New York. This is anoth­er tune where I say “I bet you know it…”.

Inci­den­tal­ly, prog rock trio Emer­son Lake and Palmer did a ver­sion of Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, just as they did a ver­sion of anoth­er blog top­ic here, Aaron Copland’s Fan­fare for the Com­mon Man.

Mod­est Mus­sorgsky
Music

The Jackson Five’s I Want You Back (1969)

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It was Gladys Knight who first made a call to leg­endary Motown founder Berry Gordy to tell him about an excit­ing new act she had over­heard from her dress­ing room on the sec­ond floor of the Regal The­ater, Chica­go. Gordy nev­er returned that call but a short time late Motown was approached again, this time by Bob­by Tay­lor of Bob­by Tay­lor and the Van­cou­vers who told A&R Vice Pres­i­dent Ralph Seltzer about this sen­sa­tion­al act that had opened for them at the High Chap­ar­ral club. So it came to pass that the Jack­son Five – for it was they – went to Detroit to audi­tion for Motown, and Gordy signed them up right away.

In Octo­ber 1969, the Jack­son Five’s first nation­al sin­gle, I Want You Back, was released, and became their first num­ber one hit on 30ᵗʰ Jan­u­ary 1970. It was per­formed on the band’s first tele­vi­sion appear­ances on Diana Ross’s The Hol­ly­wood Palace and on their mile­stone per­for­mance of 14ᵗʰ Decem­ber 1969, on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

The song was writ­ten and pro­duced by the pro­duc­tion team known as The Cor­po­ra­tion, com­pris­ing Motown chief Berry Gordy him­self, Fred­die Per­ren, Alphon­so Mizell, and Deke Richards. Orig­i­nal­ly con­sid­ered for Gladys Knight & the Pips and lat­er for Diana Ross, the song was re-worked to suit its main lead vocal being per­formed by a tween, the then-11-year-old Michael Jack­son. Here’s Jack­ie Jackson’s mem­o­ry of the event:

“I remem­ber going into the Motown stu­dio and hear­ing the track com­ing through the big stu­dio mon­i­tors right in our face,” says Jack­ie Jack­son. “It was slam­ming. The intro was so strong. Berry always taught us to have a strong intro to get people’s atten­tion right away. And I remem­ber the Cor­po­ra­tion teach­ing us the song. Michael picked it up so fast; it was easy to learn for all of us. They kept chang­ing it here and there for the bet­ter. We told them it was great, but the next day Fred­die and Fonce added more things to it. They want­ed to make it per­fect. Michael did these ad-libs at the end of the song. They didn’t teach him that; he just made up his own stuff.”

And “slam­ming”, it cer­tain­ly was: an exu­ber­ant pop mas­ter­piece that remains one of my favourite all-time songs. It’s joy­ful — even if it is about a lover who is ruing his hasti­ness in drop­ping his girl! Enjoy the whole pack­age here: the glo­ri­ous cos­tumes, the boys’ volu­mi­nous Afros, the well-rehearsed dance moves, and of course the genius of Michael Jack­son man­i­fest­ed at a pre­co­cious­ly young age. Record­ed in the Goin’ Back To Indi­ana TV spe­cial in 1971.

The Jack­son Five

 

Music

Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales Of Hoffman (1880)

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Ger­man author E T A Hoff­mann (1776–1822) was one of the major writ­ers of the Roman­tic move­ment and his sto­ries of fan­ta­sy and Goth­ic hor­ror high­ly influ­enced 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. For exam­ple, Tchaikovsky’s bal­let The Nut­crack­er is based on Hoffman’s novel­la The Nut­crack­er and the Mouse King, while Delibes’ 1870 bal­let Cop­pélia is based on the short sto­ry, The Sand­man. Inci­den­tal­ly, this excerpt from the lat­ter sto­ry, describ­ing that folk­loric char­ac­ter the Sand­man, amply illus­trates that the term ‘Goth­ic hor­ror’ is no exag­ger­a­tion (in bygone ages we didn’t half spin some hor­rif­ic tales for our young, eh?):

“Most curi­ous to know more of this Sand­man and his par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion with chil­dren, I at last asked the old woman who looked after my youngest sis­ter what sort of man he was. “Eh, Nat­ty,” said she, “don’t you know that yet? He is a wicked man, who comes to chil­dren when they won’t go to bed, and throws a hand­ful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleed­ing from their heads. He puts their eyes in a bag and car­ries them to the cres­cent moon to feed his own chil­dren, who sit in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human chil­dren.”

The Sand­man (and two oth­er of Hoff­man’s tales, Coun­cil­lor Kre­spel and The Lost Reflec­tion) also inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, the opéra fan­tas­tique by French com­pos­er Jacques Offen­bach, The Tales of Hoff­man. Offen­bach (1819–1880) was already a famous com­pos­er of around 100 operettas, such as Orpheus in the Under­world (1858) and La Belle Hélène (1864), when he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jules Bar­bi­er to bring The Tales of Hoff­man to the stage. It proved to be his final work: know­ing he was dying, he wrote to impre­sario Léon Car­val­ho:

“Hâtez-vous de mon­ter mon opéra. Il ne me reste plus longtemps à vivre et mon seul désir est d’as­sis­ter à la pre­mière” (“Hur­ry up and stage my opera. I have not much time left, and my only wish is to attend the open­ing night”)

But it wasn’t to be: Offen­bach died in Octo­ber 1880, four months before the opera’s premiere…nevertheless, his work entered the stan­dard reper­to­ry and is a pop­u­lar piece to this day. Here, lis­ten to Anna Netre­bko and Elī­na Garanča sing the sopra­no and mez­zo-sopra­no duet, the Bar­carolle (Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour) from Act III. You either know it or you think you don’t know it…but you’ll know it!

Jacques Offen­bach
Music

Franz Gruber’s Silent Night (1818)

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It’s Christ­mas time and once again, like many of you, my fam­i­ly and I enjoyed a can­dlelit car­ol ser­vice at our local church. I do like this event each year; it marks the arrival of Christ­mas-prop­er and is the time when you can pause from the mer­ry-go-round that is Christ­mas-in-prac­tice and just enjoy the moment. Car­ols such as O Come All Ye Faith­ful and Hark, The Her­ald Angels Sing are ide­al for a packed church with a rous­ing organ (who doesn’t enjoy blast­ing out those barn­storm­ing Vic­to­ri­an lines such as “Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb” and “Hail th’incarnate Deity”?). The car­ol that I want to write about today, on the oth­er hand, is bet­ter suit­ed to a far more reserved affair: Silent Night is made for hushed tones and a gen­tle accom­pa­ni­ment, and for me is the very epit­o­me of the reflec­tive ele­ment of the sea­son.

The sto­ry goes that the car­ol was first per­formed on the evening of Christ­mas Eve in 1818, in St Nicholas Church, Obern­dorf, in present-day Aus­tria. The young Catholic priest at the church, Joseph Mohr, found him­self in a bit of a pick­le when the church organ became inca­pac­i­tat­ed just before that evening’s Christ­mas Mass ser­vice (in the man­ner of boil­ers break­ing down at just this wrong time of year, I sup­pose). Think­ing on his feet, he remem­bered that he had writ­ten a nice poem a few years before called Stille Nacht, and won­dered if local school­mas­ter and organ­ist Franz Gru­ber might set its six stan­zas to music for gui­tar.

Gru­ber read­i­ly agreed to step into the breach and wrote a melody there and then — and that night, the two men sang Stille Nacht for the first time at the church’s Christ­mas Mass, with Mohr play­ing gui­tar and the choir repeat­ing the last two lines of each verse. Accord­ing to Gru­ber, the organ builder who ser­viced the instru­ment at the Obern­dorf church, was so enam­oured of the song that he took the com­po­si­tion home with him to the Ziller­tal val­ley in the Tyrol where he shared it with musi­cal friends. From there, two trav­el­ling fam­i­lies of folk singers, the Strassers and the Rain­ers, includ­ed the tune in their shows, and its pop­u­lar­i­ty spread all over Europe.

Rain­er fam­i­ly

It’s a very mov­ing and hum­bling song; as a tes­ta­ment to its glob­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, it was sung by troops dur­ing the famous Christ­mas truce of World War I, per­haps because it was the one tune that was famil­iar to all of them. How poignant the words must have seemed at that par­tic­u­lar moment!

Ger­man lyricsEng­lish lyrics
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; ein­sam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Hold­er Knabe im lock­i­gen Haar,
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Hal­lelu­ja,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah:
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb’ aus deinem göt­tlichen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die ret­tende Stund’.
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!		Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon vir­gin moth­er and child!
Holy infant, so ten­der and mild,
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!Silent night! Holy night!
Shep­herds quake at the sight!
Glo­ries stream from heav­en afar,
Heav­en­ly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radi­ant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeem­ing grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!

Here is a ren­di­tion by the Span­ish sopra­nos Montser­rat Cabal­lé and her daugh­ter Montser­rat Martí. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Franz Gru­ber
Music

Dire Straits’ Sultans Of Swing (1978)

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As well as writ­ing about art and cul­ture, your blog­ger has also been known to wield a mean gui­tar (by “mean”, I mean “aver­age”) and, although fame failed to beck­on after the van­i­ty-fund­ed release of the damn fine album Sara­ban­da by The Mavis Trains in 1999, I still know my approx­i­mate way around a fret­board and con­tin­ue to play from time to time in the com­fort of my home. Recent­ly, for a bit of fun, I videoed myself per­form­ing an acoustic ver­sion of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, to mild­ly amuse some select­ed friends. As a result, I was chal­lenged by the son of one of those friends to have a go at that Dire Straits’ clas­sic, Sul­tans Of Swing.

I sus­pect, giv­en Mark Knopfler’s obvi­ous tech­ni­cal prowess, that the chal­lenge was deliv­ered with some­thing of an inter­nal chuck­le and the thought “good luck with that!”. And so, the ensu­ing weeks have seen me watch­ing online tuto­ri­als, scru­ti­n­is­ing line after line of tab­la­ture, and furi­ous­ly prac­tic­ing with a view to bam­boo­zling my imag­ined detrac­tors’ assump­tion of fail­ure. Curse them, and curse Mark Knopfler’s super-fast dex­ter­i­ty and total com­mand of his instru­ment!

In all seri­ous­ness though, Hugo (for it was he), Sul­tans Of Swing is a great shout; it’s a tremen­dous song. It was inspired appar­ent­ly by a real-life encounter with a jazz band in an almost emp­ty pub in Dept­ford on a rainy night in 1977. Amused by the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the band’s non­de­script and shab­by appear­ance (I’m imag­in­ing Chas and Dave types) with their grandiose name (“we are the Sul­tans of Swing!”), Knopfler began to pen what would become his band’s debut sin­gle in the fol­low­ing year.

Knopfler wrote the song on a Nation­al Steel gui­tar (a spe­cial kind of res­onator gui­tar used by the Blues­men of old before the days of elec­tron­ic ampli­fi­ca­tion) but it wasn’t until he played it on a Stra­to­cast­er that the song took on the vibran­cy with which we asso­ciate with it today: “It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat … the new chord changes just pre­sent­ed them­selves and fell into place”.  It cer­tain­ly came alive: let’s hear it again in all its glo­ry, below.

Dire Straits