Music For the Festive Season. . .

The cover of one of our three favorite "traditional" Christmas collections that we enjoy every year here at Totleigh-in-the-Wold.

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent, and the Christmas festival follows not far behind. While I prefer not to rush into things, it's hard not to begin thinking about the celebration and enjoying the small flourishes that go along with it like, for example, the music related to Christmas.

While I also enjoy traditional English carols along with more recent seasonal tunes by The Kinks, Greg Lake, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Andy Williams (along with holiday cheese by Dean Martin, Paul McCartney, and, yes, even WHAM!), in my view, you simply cannot go wrong with traditional German Christmas music. It provides a quiet and calm antidote to the overplayed schlock that clogs the airwaves at this time of year.

Three of our favorite collections (on CD. . . How 20th century of us!) include:

1) Weihnachten: A German Christmas
2) Christmas in Vienna: The Vienna Boys' Choir
3) German Christmas Music: Kammerorchester by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach

All are fairly easy to find and order online. Start with Amazon, the most obvious choice these days. Listening to these collections, you'll of course notice a few well-known melodies along with much that is less familiar though no less beautiful in the form of choral and instrumental music.

A very fitting soundtrack for Advent and the coming Christmas season without having to fall back on the likes of Moriah Carey, Whitney Houston, Cold Play, Taylor Swift, or the cast of Glee, or whoever it was who recorded that dreadful tear-jerker Christmas Shoes. The last of which the less said the better.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

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