HEAR YE!
HEAR YE! HEAR YE!
To help celebrate this Christmas Season we have posted a series of examples of the finest performances we could find of sacred music composed especially for the Christmas Season.
Starting yesterday after first posting the original television broadcast of Amahl and the Night Visitors in its entirety, we offer splendid performances of the following:
O Holy Night
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I Wonder As I Wander
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Il est ne, le divin enfant
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For Unto Us A Child Is Born
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O Magnum Mysterium
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Rejoice , O Daughter of Zion
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Ding Dong Merrily on High
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Christmas Day, a Choral Fantasy
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Please feel free to wander back and forth through these individual selections, and enjoy them in no particular order, as ~ or if ~ the mood strikes. They'll be here all Christmas week and beyond.
Merry Christmas!!!
My goodness! That's QUITE a selection to choose from!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, FT!
Now if ONLY you could get us drunk and make us ALL sing in a public performance... (Plato, "Laws")
ReplyDelete...the world would end up a MUCH better place.!
...of course, perhaps the statement above is a bit too Euripidean. ;)
ReplyDeletefor... The satyr as the Dionysian chorus member lives in a reality permitted by religion, sanctioned by myth and culture. The fact that tragedy begins with him, that out of him the Dionysian wisdom of tragedy speaks, is a phenomenon as foreign to us here as the development of tragedy out of the chorus generally.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to all. May the spirit of the season always be with us.
ReplyDeleteI hope everyone listens to all the selections, eventually. There's certainly no rush. Even though I may post new items on top of these, this music will be available as long as the blog stays alive -- unless, of course, YouTube makes one of their frequent arbitrary, always unwelcome changes.
ReplyDeleteYouTube is a marvelous resource, but like most things -- including intelligence -- it provides access to the best that's in us and the absolute worst simultaneously.
As such it's a microcosm of the world. Though you've recently denied it, I firmly believe we DO have a choice.
We can listen to Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Dizzy Gillespie - OR - we can waste our time and destroy our soulss watching ghastly exhibitions by Madonna, Lady Ga Ga and the like, or Sado-Masochistic pornography and depraved teenagers setting puppies and kitten on fire then gleefully watching them die in agony.
It's all there, BUT we DO have the power to CHOOSE the edifying over the evil.
That why the religious aspect of CHRISTMAS in all its glory is so vitally important.
I'm sure it's saved me from a life of waste, self-indulgence, gloom and despair.
There's great beauty in the twin virtues of self-discipline and sacrifice. Life's more fun that way too.
I know, because I've tried both.
~ FT