Wrapped in metal, wrapped in ivy

[sovay]

Driving around on errands, I seem to have discovered that my tolerance for Christmas music has zeroed out unless it falls into the class of traditional carols, i.e. can be used for wassailing, first appeared in Latin, was arranged once by Benjamin Britten. I relayed this sentiment to spatch and he promptly broke out SNL's "I Wish It Was Christmas Today." When we saw the news of the death of Dave Mallett, I played him my favorite version of the "Garden Song," from Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger's Precious Friend (1981). I remain entertained that the official website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had to put up a short post attesting to the historical reality of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Penalty for Keeping Christmas 1659. The catchiest music I have heard on the radio lately—WHRB, natch—is almost certainly Auntie Christ's "I Don't" (1997). I am all for amending our still-critical drought, but these 100% chances of rain could be snow any time now.

Comments

[sovay]

Unexpectedly positive feature of running a synagogue: never ever Christmas music.

Even alternative stations play it! It's just on the radio!

[selkie]

The grimmest part of my marriage is the driver/shotgun/cake hole maxim, which means from the day after Thanksgiving it's 97.1 ALL FUCKEN CHRISTMAS!!!! radio in the Blubaru. (I am fine with shapenote carols, wassail songs, things in Latin, and Handel's Messiah as long as I can attempt the soprano part, which turns each movement into a pact of mutually assured destruction!)

[sovay]

(I am fine with shapenote carols, wassail songs, things in Latin, and Handel's Messiah as long as I can attempt the soprano part, which turns each movement into a pact of mutually assured destruction!)

I haven't actually heard the complete Messiah in ages. The last time was when we sang it at Brandeis.

[selkie]

IMO it needs full organ and one (1) fat contralto goin' for that A4, on the highway. Anybody who thinks I can't support and be a passenger princess is wrong!
Edit: we could have a singalong.

[sovay]

Edit: we could have a singalong.

Your spouse is supposed to keep speaking to me!

[selkie]

Yes but, yes but, hear me out, you actually could get to the A4. And if you wanted to have a proper car Messiah I would sit in the back with Eli and sing *checks* yeah probably the fiddly contralto part.

[ethelmay]

My son was in a boychoir, and we went to a Messiah singalong when his voice was starting to change. He and I got adjacent seats on the edges of the soprano and alto sections (I had sung [chorus, not solo] alto in the Messiah many years previously; he had only sung the Hallelujah Chorus). During the warm-up he went all the way up with the sopranos and most of the way down with the basses. Then he sight-sang right through. It was such fun.

[selkie]

What a fun memory, indeed! Also, I am impressed by a young person with the mastery to sight-sing Baroque stuff.
Our son's voice is revamping into a baritone by way of a high-speed run over a suspension bridge with a lot of expansion links in it, at the moment, and he is... an accompanist and not a singer, bless, but he does *like* to sing.

[ethelmay]

I think he was doing a fair amount of instant-echo of the women around him, and he had probably heard some of it before. But I was still impressed. These days (he's 26) he does shape-note but not much other music.