Alleluia!  Laudemus Te

The Christmas holidays are a time of celebration.  Though not written specifically for Christmas, Alfred Reed wrote this as a “Celebration Hymn” – and its spirit provides an appropriate opening for a December holiday concert.  Laudemus te translates as “We praise you.”  Reed is one of America’s greatest concert band composers, with over 250 compositions played round the world.  He wrote this as a commission for the band program at Malone College in Ohio, and when he died in 2005, he had still accepted enough similar commissions for the next 20 years.  It begins and ends with a glorious fanfare.  In between Reed writes a long lyrical melody for woodwinds and horns (introduced by clarinets) and a more martial theme dominated by the brass.  But in typically rich Reed fashion, he lets all sections share in that latter theme.

Eighth Candle

Steve Reisteter composed this piece for a band conductor requesting a work celebrating Hanukah. This holiday commemorates the Jewish fighters known as the Maccabees and their victory over the Syrian forces of Antiochus in 168 BC.  In celebration, there was supposedly only enough lamp oil for a single day – but it miraculously burned for eight days instead.  In modern celebrations they light candles for eight days, but most Menorahs hold nine candles – the extra one lighting the others.

Reisteter subtitles this piece ‘Prayer and Dance for Hanukah. ‘The piece opens with a contemplative, reverent and hopeful prayer.  The Dance – a celebration after the victory – is wonderfully lively, with the free and constantly shifting metric style of Mid-East rhythms – passages is 5/8, 4/4, 5/4 and ¾.  Reisteter composed all the themes for the piece.  Yet it is so well and authentically written, Jewish conductors have asked him where he found these folk-tunes they hadn’t heard before!

Sussex Mummers

Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly remain justifiably famous for the pioneering ethnomusicological folksong collecting.  They began travelling into peasant villages in 1905-06 and making recordings of these songs, then transcribing them.  Their first folksong publications appeared in 1906.  What is not so well known is that Australian-born Percy Grainger accomplished the same feats in England at that time.  He’d settled in England in 1901, joined the English Folk Song Society in 1905, and in 1906 was taking similar recording equipment into English villages to collect the songs.  Sussex Mummers was first written down in Sussex in the early 1880s with the title Tipteers or Tipteerers.  This gentle piece concludes with a blessing on “Your house, children, cattle and store; may the lord send you more and more.”  Grainger made a piano version of it 1911, and later a string orchestra version as well.  Richard Franko Goldman urged Grainger to make a concert band arrangement.  Grainger agreed, but it was left unfinished at his death – and Goldman completed the arrangement we all perform today.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

All the highlights of Clement Moore’s beloved Christmas poem appear in this narration with band accompaniment.  Jack Bullock wrote the arrangement, and had a great deal of fun with it.  You can’t take this piece seriously for a single moment!  Soon after Santa’s sleigh appears, we get a few bars of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.  When he pops down the chimney, Bullock gives us a quick excerpt of ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’ from Mary Poppins.  And Santa opening his sack is of course accompanied by the familiar strains from Babes in Toyland.  Be prepared to chuckle.  A lot!

We Wish You a Klezmer Christmas

The Klezmer throughout history were excellent professional musicians in the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. They performed for festive social and civic occasions, especially weddings and important feast days.  Though temporarily prevented from playing on Christian Holy Days, the Archbishop of Prague restored that right in 1741.  In the 19th-century, Leipzig Klezmerim performed for Mendelssohn.  In the last two centuries, the clarinet has become associated with a traditional Klezmer sound, and We Wish You a Klezmer Christmas opens with a clarinet solo.  That is also the last serious moment in the piece, and some traditional Klezmer rhythms and scoring enliven three familiar Christmas carols.  We wish you a Merry Christmas, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Deck the Hall all appear – in the wrong keys!  Mendelssohn wrote ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and he’s turning in his grave...