Discovering New Seasonal Music

Something I love to do during Advent and Christmas is to play seasonal music at home. This year I’ve tried to explore some new (to me) and interesting repertoire, like John Tavener’s “Ex Maria Virgine,” recorded on the Naxos label. The 2005 piece is a 10-part work for choir and orchestra and reflects Tavener’s Orthodox faith in the series of words on Mary. It’s not your usual Christmas music! He uses beautiful melodies but also discordant and dark music, for instance, the sequence when the choir jarringly repeats Ave, Rex!

More meditative but still thought-provoking is a CD “Puer Natus Est” on the Harmonia Mundi lable. The British ensemble Stile Antico performs several Tudor-period works, like Thomas Tallis’ seven part mass, “Puer natus est nobis,” along with several pieces by William Byrd (for instance, “Ecce Virgo, “Rorate Caeli”), John Taverner (“Audivi vocem de coelo”), John Sheppard (“Verbum caro factum est”), Robert White’s Magnificat, and the anonymous piece that is the CD’s title work.

This season I’ve also been listening for the first time to Heinrich Schütz’s “Christmas Story” (“Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi”) which premiered in Dresden for the 1660 Christmas Day vespers. Narrated by the tenor Evangelist, Schütz’s oratorio takes us from Christ’s birth through the return of the holy family from Egypt.

The Christmas 2012 issue of BBC Music magazine has a review of the better recordings of “Christmas Story,” and that issue also has a nice article about Ralph Vaughan Williams, who is always my favorite composer. Although his pieces aren't new to me, I like to think about discovering his “Fantasia on Christmas Carols,” “Hodie,” and “The First Nowell” back in the 1980s, and more recently the ballet “On Christmas Night,” which had its premier on CD on the Chandos label just a few years ago. The author calls RVW a "Christmas loving agnostic" who always had fresh ideas about Christmas music; in fact, “The First Nowell,” a nativity play, was the piece he was working on when he died in 1958.

Another interesting piece for this season is Oliver Messiaen's organ work, "La Nativité du Seigneur," premiered in 1936.  Honoring the birth of Christ via nine pieces (which in turn honors Mary's maternity), the piece is also revolutionary in organ music for Messiaen's tonal and rhythmic innovations.