Christmas Music

Happy holidays, everyone, and happy New Year. Hope you’ve

all been having a good and restful time. One highlight of my holiday was a

Christmas dinner we gave for 15 assorted family members, featuring a 20-pound

roast beef, which was so big we couldn’t fit it in our refrigerator. Had to put

it outside in the cold, but not on our deck, because animals might eat it, or on

our porch, because birds might get it (turkey vultures or crows). So we put it

in our car.

One feature of Christmas, of course—one unavoidable

feature—is Christmas music, which I love, as long as I’m not forced to listen to

it in too many stores. We had a lot of it at home, alternating between pop (my

choice) and classical (my wife’s). That made me think about the differences

between pop and classical Christmas music, which tell a lot, I suddenly

realized, about the differences, on a larger scale, between all of pop and all

of classical.

Classical Christmas music, at its best, is joyous and

radiant. Reverent, too. It tends to be religious, and often tends to sound

traditional. That’s what people like about it. (I’m counting classical versions

of Christmas carols here, just so everyone’s clear about that.) And it also—with

the grand exception of Christmas music sung by old-time opera singers—tends to

be discreet and respectable. Nobody’s going to get larger than life. Nobody’s

going to be funny. Nobody’s going to show any attitude.

What can spoil classical Christmas music? Two things (maybe

more, but I haven’t thought of them). The carol arrangements can be awful—too

fancy, too gaudy, too restrained, too inept. There’s a big gap between the great

composers we’re used to and most of the people who do Christmas carol

arrangments, and the gap is, all too often, all too easy to hear. And then

classical singers can be overbearing. Christmas carols—and even some of the

standard classical Christmas songs, like “Panis Angelicus” or “O Holy

Night”—aren’t deep or complex music, and can easily be spoiled, or else made

crazily ridiculous, when singers do too much with them.

What this means is that opera singers often have to turn

down their wattage. Case in point: Eileen Farrell blazing through “Deck the

Halls” at something near full gleaming power, overwhelming the poor little song,

and just about leaving it comatose with shock. Hearing this is like needing some

milk, and driving to the convenience store in a fire engine, with lights and

sirens going crazy. Classical singers can also be sententious. Even Franco

Corelli, one of my all-time favorites, practically murders “Panis Angelicus,”

which just can’t take his slurping passion. But the worst, the very worst I

heard, was (to my dismay) Marian Anderson, who sings “Away in a Manger” as if

she was a marble statue of Queen Victoria overacting as she played a marble

statue of Queen Victoria on TV. She’s unbearable.

Pop Christmas music is normally fun. A lot of it is

secular. Well, “Jingle Bells,” in the traditional Christmas carol repertoire, is

also secular, as is “Deck the Halls,” but both are secular about things that

aren’t around much any more, sleighs and fa la las, which give them both an air

of sacred music, since they bring us to a world as far from us, and as

nostalgically imagined, as angels or the Christmas star. And pop Christmas songs

are secular in the most everyday sense—“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” or

“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” That’s their strength; both in their tone

and content they ground us in the life we actually live. (Just as the strength

of classical Christmas music, at its best, is to take us off to what might be a

better life.)

They also can be low-key, and funny. I don’t know how many

times I’ve heard “The Chipmunk Song,” with Alvin messing up, over and over. But

it always makes me laugh. And pop Christmas songs can be sad—“Blue Christmas,”

or, most poignantly, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” which (as I learned from a

feature in the Daily News, my favorite New York tabloid) was written

during World War II, and speaks for guys who were off fighting in the military,

and might never see Christmas at home again. (“I’ll be home for Christmas/If

only in my dreams.”) A lot of people are sad during the holidays; sadness is

also a very natural, and even (in a way) a very holy part of life. Bringing it

into Christmas music helps make Christmas human and complete.

And what goes wrong with pop Christmas songs? They can trip

over their attitude. Or, rather, their attitude stops meaning anything. How many

times can you hear some hipster (or would-be hipster) take on “Jingle Bells,”

with a subtext that says nothing more than “Hey, I’m a hipster singing ‘Jingle

Bells.’” That gets old in about 20 seconds.

And can pop Christmas songs be reverent? That’s not a move

that comes easily to them, but yes, they really can make it, or at least some

singers can. Elvis can. His “Silent Night” is oddly touching; he brings it off

lightly, but with a properly serious tone, which came easily to him, I think,

first because he was the ultimate musical chameleon, and could imitate anything,

and secondly because he sang gospel music reverently. Didn’t take much to

transpose the tone into something appropriate for “Silent Night.”

Maybe the most reverent pop Christmas song I’ve ever heard

is Aaron Neville’s version of “Ave Maria”; it’s pure, and gorgeous. The Beach

Boys ought to be able to sing reverently, because they were masters of close

harmony. But their version of “We Three Kings” (the only traditional song on

their Christmas album) sounds smarmy. Phil Spector’s “Silent Night,” on his

immortal Christmas album, serves mainly as an accompaniment to a spoken message

from him, but it’s lovely; Spector, clearly, could have been reverent if he

hadn’t wanted instead to put more pure verve and power into “Frosty the Snowman”

than you’d ever think the song could handle. (Maybe that’s his own form of

reverence.)

In the end, it’s a tossup. Like so many choices in life, it

depends what you’re looking for. I do end up, though, with two regrets about

classical Christmas music. It’s predictable; it covers, really, a pretty narrow

range of emotion, no matter how touching the feelings in that range can be. (I’m

excepting, of course, full-length masterworks like Messiah or

L’enfance du Christ.) And there ought to be room in it for something other

than radiance, reverence, and tradition. I miss humor, and everyday sadness.

Very, very rarely these things sneak in. I remember a really sweet “White

Christmas” from Carlo Bergonzi, which he sings first in English, and then in

Italian. His English is (how can I put this?) wonderfully sincere, but when he

switches to his own language, his voice brightens; it’s like a quiet sunburst.

But maybe the most touching Christmas track I heard this

year was a Nancy Wilson version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” which I

found on an anthology with the scary name Yule B’ Swinging.  Wilson makes

the song, in an unassuming but unmistakable way, the triumph of hope over

experience. She thinks the guy just maybe might go out with her, but she doesn’t

quite believe it. But still she’s hopeful. That’s more complex emotion than I

got from any of the classical stuff, and it made me sad that classical music

doesn’t seem to have any room for any Christmas song like this.