Brad's Music Room

The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed the score.

The ballet is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” It premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892. It was on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky’s opera, Iolanta.

The original production was not a success, However, the twenty-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. Since the late 1960s, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity. Furthermore, it is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season. Major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.

via The Nutcracker – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Those of you with daughters are probably intimately familiar with this piece, as am I. Maybe it even brings back fond memories of your days as a ballerina.

Here is a sample from the movement Waltz of the Flowers

“Ode To Joy” is the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth and last Symphony. The German composer spent seven years working on this symphony. He started the work in 1818 and finished in 1824. The symphony is one of the best-known works of Western classical music. Importantly, Scholars consider it one of Beethoven’s masterpieces.

At the time it was a novel idea to use a chorus and solo voices in a symphony. Therefore it is also called the “Choral” symphony. Beethoven, in fact, had serious misgivings about portraying the music’s message with actual words. Even after the premiere, he apparently considered replacing all the vocal lines with instrumental ones.

The words, which are sung by four vocal soloists and a chorus, emanate a strong belief in mankind. They were taken from a poem written by German writer Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803, with additions made by Beethoven.

Beethoven was completely deaf when he embarked on this masterpiece. Tragically he never heard a single note of it, except inside his head. At the end of the symphony’s first performance, Beethoven, who had been directing the piece was facing the orchestra. Consequently, the contralto Caroline Unger had to turn him around so he could see the audience’s ecstatic reaction. Amazingly he had been unaware of the tumultuous roars of applause behind him.

via Ode To Joy by Ludwig Van Beethoven Songfacts.

I think Joy is a pretty good word to describe the people in this video.

While Handel’s “Messiah” rightly holds its place as this country’s classical musical soundtrack for the holiday season (quibble if you will about its Easter message;  there’s nothing wrong with talking about Easter at Christmas – just ask Bach!), it’s J.S. Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” that rings through concert halls throughout Europe at this time of the year.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the Christmas Oratorio, for the Christmas season of 1734.

The oratorio is in six parts, each part being intended for performance on one of the major feast days of the Christmas period.

1. The first part (for Christmas Day) describes the birth of Jesus.
2. The second (for December 26) the annunciation to the shepherds.
3. The third (for December 27) the adoration of the shepherds.
4. The fourth (for New Year’s Day) the circumcision and naming of Jesus.
5. The fifth (for the first Sunday after New Year) the journey of the Magi.
6. The sixth (for Epiphany) the adoration of the Magi.