whskyjack

Not ready yet for Christmas, (I did finally get most of my Christmas lights up outside) Not in a “Bah! Humbug!” mood, it just doesn’t feel as if Christmas is less than 2 weeks away.

With that, today’s selection, while proper for the season, doesn’t have a Christmas vibe. It is Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite performed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Guaranteed to get your fingers a snappin’ and your toes a tappin’

Enjoy Jack

Winter Daydreams, symphony #1 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

From Wikipedia:

Tchaikovsky wrote his Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Winter Daydreams (or Winter Dreams) Op. 13, in 1866, just after he accepted a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory: it is the composer’s earliest notable work. The composer’s brother, Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, asserted that the symphony’s creation from beginning to end cost his sibling more labor than any other works and even involved considerable suffering. Even so, he remained fond of it throughout his life. Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck in 1883 that he believed, “although it is in many ways very immature,” he still knows that “yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works.”

Enjoy, Jack

Here is the one song that expresses this holiday for me; a time of family, food and conversation. Simple gifts we share from one to another.

Enjoy, Jack

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

Today’s selection is Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cécile or St Cecilia Mass, composed by Charles Gounod.

From Wikipedia:

St. Cecilia Mass is the common name of a solemn mass in G major by Charles Gounod, composed in 1855 and scored for three soloists, mixed choir, orchestra and organ. The official name is Messe solennelle en l’honneur de Sainte-Cécile, in homage of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music. 

It is a beautiful composition with the soloists, choir and orchestra coming together in a way that gets our Thanksgiving week off to a pleasant start. I’m not an enthusiast for this type of music but I could listen to this Mass all day.

Enjoy, Jack