Where Riches Is Everlastingly: Making the Most of the Music of Christmas

Where Riches is Everlastingly: Making the Most of the Music of Christmas

Into this world this day did come,

Jesus Christ both God and man,

Lord and Servant in one person

Born of the blessed Virgin Mary.

I pray you be merry and sing with me, in worship of Christ's nativity.

He that was rich, without any need,

appeared in this world in right poor weed.

to make us that were poor indeed,

Rich without any need truly.

A stable his chamber, a cratch was his bed,

He had not a pillow to lay under his head;

With maiden's milk that babe was fed,

In poor clothes was lapped the Lord Almighty.

A noble lesson here is us taught,

To set all worldly riches at naught,

But pray we that we may be thither brought,

Where riches is everlastingly.

Where do you go to find the music you are looking for?

What would you like to run away from? A horrendous Christmas music memory?

Best?

I. Get Nostalgic, Really--Sing Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany

Recent studies conclude that singing can help you stay healthy. Scientists at the University of Frankfurt in Germany published their findings in the latest edition of the US Journal of Behavioral Medicine that singing strengthens people’s immune systems. They tested the blood of people who sang in a professional choir before and after a 60-minute rehearsal of Mozart’s Requiem. They found increased concentrations of immunoglobin A, proteins in the immune system which function as antibodies, and hydrocortisone, an anti-stress hormone. A week later, when the choir members were asked to merely listen to a recording of the Requiem they found the composition of their blood did not change significantly. Singing strengthened their immune systems.

The director of educational research at the University of Surrey in England concluded singing releases endorphins into your system and makes you feel energized and uplifted. People who sing are healthier than people who don’t.

A study from London’s Roehampton Institute concluded that singing helps circulation, which in turn oxygenates the cells and boosts the body’s immune system to ward off minor infections.

Preliminary data from George Washington University in Arlington, Va., showed that singers suffer less depression, make fewer doctor visits a year, and take fewer medications than non-singers.

Researchers at the University of Manchester discovered that the sacculus, a tiny organ in the inner ear, responds to frequencies commonly found in music, and is connected to the part of the brain responsible for registering pleasure. The sacculus is only responsive to low frequency, high intensity sounds, which includes singing and releases pleasure-giving endorphins. Singing makes you happy.

Singing causes endorphins to flow, stimulating good feeling throughout the body and stimulating brain activity. Singing encourages deep breathing, which brings more oxygen to the brain. Singing requires the brain to work at many tasks simultaneously. Singing strengthens memory. Singing teaches opposites, such as fast and slow, loud and quiet, long and short, tension and release. Every good song carries some of these elements of contrast in it.

II. Performance Practice

The notion of “performance practice” is that instruments and styles and performance spaces have changed over the years, so to hear a piece of music the way it was intended to be heard, you must recreate the conditions of the original performance. That is not to say that a modern rendition is not good, it just misses some of the essence of the original.

I evoke, therefore, the idea of “performance practice” as part of the problem of the assault we have on us at Christmas. “White Christmas” had a context. “Rudolph” had a context. “Blue Christmas” had a context. “Mele Kalikimaka” had a context. We get all of this delivered up to us in the craziest mashup assault on our ears and emotions, without and of that context. Tell me, would any of you WILLINGLY listen to “Mele Kalikimaka” normally, but somehow, it is thrust upon you:

So, I first submit, that if you want to enjoy this onslaught, it is best done in context and intentionally, or your ears and eyes and emotions will be out of control. As Dean Back has wisely analyzed, our aural experience of Christmas is no different than going to a part of every imaginable food laid out before you. It is wise to sample carefully, and make wise choices.

I'll have a Blue (whoooo) Christmas (whoooo) without you (whoooo x2),

I'll be so blue (whoooo)just thinking (whooo) about you (whooo x2),

Decora (ahhh) –tionsof red (ahhh) on a green Christmas tree (ahhhh)

Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me.

And the when those blue (whooo) snowflakes (whooo) start fallin' (whooo),

That's when those blue (whoooo) memories (whooo) start callin' (whooo x2),

You'll be do (ahhh) -in' all right (ahhh), with your Christmas of white

But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.

III. Putting on New Ears (what’s old is new again)

The problem is that Christmas is not one-dimensional, particularly for people of a mature faith. While there is the recently “invented” Christmas, which I find fun and enjoyable, just like the “invented” Mother’s Day, it is untouchable, sentimental, but fabricated.

I suggest that Christmas is a great time to “put on new ears” when it comes to listening to the season. I like to take the traditional, the nostalgic, and the historic, and find settings that are more intentional for me. Many of you may be like me, and while you have no issue with Elvis, Bing Crosby, the Chipmunks, or Charlie Brown, if you want kitsch, you prefer Chevy Chase, Tuna Christmas, or Monty Python. I usually program these things right around the first Sunday in Advent to get it all out of my system. Like Will Farrell in “Talladega Nights”, I do like the “Christmas baby Jesus”, at least when it comes to popular culture.

However, for me, I prefer for my authentic experience to come through “new ears”, or making the old new again.Here is my favorite for this year: Sting

Another approach is to listen to any medieval or Renaissance music. For some reason, and I don’t think it is accidental, I hear more medieval music during this season than any other time of year.

I think you could listen to this all day long and be at peace:

-Gregorian chant; Anonymous 4

IV. Control the Genome

Believe it or not, like in molecular biology, music style from song to song and from composer to composer has a discernible “genome”, or hereditary information that connects type-to-type. In other words, there are elements that make the songs of Elvis related to the songs of Roy Orbison, or the music of Bach related to the music of Handel.

And that genome can be very specific and illusive to your ears. For example, cadences that you are use to hearing are different with the music of, say, the Beatles. In most music, at the cadence, you hear a chord consisting of 1,3,5. Not so with John and Paul. The cadence is an open 4th or 5th. That is what makes their genome unique.

You can control what “genome” you desire through a wonderful 21st century, FREE, musical source, Pandora.

And, right here in Oklahoma City, the first choral radio station is available FREE through ACDA

So, with this in mind, and with some intentionality on your part, you can stream music of your choice, or at least find a mash up that is more mature and interesting.