December 17, 2005
on music and christmas traditions...
i am no music connoisseur. plain and simple. i love music, but i love music in a simple way, without giving it too much thought or analysis. when i go to concert i have a very rudimentary mechanism that tells me when i really really enjoy a particular piece, verse or bar: i get goosebumps on my forearms and on the left side of my neck. now, i do know that when i've been at concert with some of my more music-savvy friends, and i've made appreciative noises when my goosebump sensor goes off, my friends tend to agree that that was in fact a particularly pleasing part.
anyways, that was a pretty big introduction. last night we went to the Christmas concert at the Oslo concert hall and it was just enchanting. The concert is a collaboration between the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir and has been a christmas tradition in our family for a number of years. while the precise line-up of music changes from year to year, it always opens with a medieval norwegian christmas song where the choir enters the hall from the rear, each of the singers holding a lit candle. this is an a capella piece and not only sets a lovely mood for the rest of the concert, but also gave me goosebump alert #1.
This year the program contained a number of personal and familial favorites, such as the Hallelulja chorus from Handel's Messiah, a collection of snippets from Tchaikovsky's Nut Cracker Suite, Gruber's Stille Nacht, and as always, ending with one of the most traditional Norwegian Christmas songs. My recollection is a bit fuzzy, but i do believe that between 5 and 6 times i was so pleasantly surprised by a particular rendition of a familiar passage, or by the choir hitting a particular note, that my goosebumps came out. : )
For the final song the choir sings the first verse, and then the whole audience joins in for the final two. the collective aspect of this song, the fact that practically everyone there learned this song in elementary school and knows it by heart, the gorgeous christmas decorations and the wonderful orchestra and choir makes this one of my most beloved christmas traditions.
Posted by lara at December 17, 2005 08:15 AM
