Music

There are 42 posts filed in Music (this is page 1 of 5).

What are the first words of “White Christmas”? It’s not what you think….

I know this is a little after the Christmas holiday, but still within the Christmas season. When I took over directing a company choir a long time ago, I went to the music store to pick out some octavos for a Christmas program. One of the ones I selected was “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin. When I opened to the first page, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but the following words…

The sun is shining, the grass is green

The orange and palm trees sway

There’s never been such a day

In Beverly Hills, L.A.

But it’s December the twenty-forth

And I am longing to be up North….

Then the words everyone knows….

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…..

This was in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s, so no Internet around to check on this, but I always remembered as a “fun fact”. Later, I saw the movie “White Christmas”, and thought “I am going to hear those words now”…but no….

This year, I learned that the song first premiered in film in the movie “Holiday Inn”. I searched for a clip with the performance…but no….

Finally, I found an article where the author stumbled onto this “fun fact” and managed to find a recording of a 1968 TV performance where Bing Crosby (yes, Mr. “White Christmas” himself) sang the original words.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Mavis and Marvin Smiley/A Prairie Home Companion

On the former radio show A Prairie Home Companion, there were a number of recurring “commercials” which were always great fun to listen to. One of my favorites was the commercials for Do-Tell Records, featuring “Mavis and Marvin Smiley and the Manhattan Valley Boys” (in real life, it was Robin and Linda Williams and their bluegrass band).

One of my favorites was “Broadway Bluegrass”, which I remember in its original performance, but have not been able to find online until this week. Here is is in all its glory!

Music is a robust language

I sing in a church choir, one which typically sings four-part harmony. For many hymns, we start in unison for verse 1, then add parts in later verses. Sometimes, my fellow tenor and I will try to sing our part, but decide to shift to unison. Sometimes, when I sing, I sing the wrong pitch, or the wrong words. However, the music goes on – in general, the choir continues singing. Even in cases where the director may make a change (going to another verse due to the entrance of the priest not being complete), the choir follows, using their musicality to keep the music going.

In all these instances, the printed music provides the framework for the musical performance. As a counter-point, source code for computer software is a fragile language – one semi-colon out of place and everything stops…

Memories of Thanksgiving parades

I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on NBC this morning while preparing for our Thanksgiving meal. There were quite a lot of Broadway show excepts and pop performers, but there were also the marching bands (both high school and college). When I was in band in high school in the 1970s, the comic strip “Funky Winkerbean” had a character who was the band director at Funky’s high school. His name was Harry L. Dinkle, and was a great entertainment to me and several of my band friends. One year, Harry’s band was going to go to the Macy’s parade in New York City. Of course, they had many obstacles to overcome, but my memory is that they made it to New York, although they may have not marched in the parade. The strip author Tom Batiuk also has a page on Harry Dinkle on his website.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Looking into protest songs

I have been looking into what protest songs/chants have been used in the past five to ten years. Researcher Noriko Manabe from Indiana University has a recent journal article and a set of posts on Medium collecting songs and chants from US protests since 2017:

Journal of Music and Politics: Chants of the Resistance: Flow, Memory, and Inclusivity

Medium: Collection of posts on chants and songs since 2017

Also, I found these links:

National Women’s History Museum: Brief overview of protest songs

The Commons Social Change Library: Listen and Watch to 40 years of Australian Blockading Songs

The language of music

This past year, my wife and I resumed singing in our church choir. It was fun to get together with old friends and making music. As we started, I realized how much of a language written music represents. All of the people in the choir are comfortable in reading music, so the duration and pitch of the notes, the rests, all come together in a common, joyful sound. We are all “reading from the same page”, so to speak. Now there can be variation in musical language, just as in computer languages. However, they represent a common grammar, a common ground, where people can come together to create music or software. We are all richer for the experience.