Behind the Music

Why is the joyful “Carol of the Bells,” written in a minor key? Aren’t minor keys supposed to sound sad?

November 10, 2021November 29, 2015 by debisimons

Now bear with me here. I’m not a music theorist, so you musicians reading this may wince a little in places. This post will be very much of a layperson’s view of the whole major/minor issue and its relationship to the mood of a piece. I’m probably spelling out more than I need to in places; no intention is meant to insult anyone’s musical intelligence!

Where to begin? I guess with the question of what makes a key minor. Hoo boy. That question opens up a real kettle of fish of a different color. In modern tuning there are 7 major keys using sharps and 7 using flats (with some overlap, but I’m not going to get into that). There is also one key, C major, which has no flats or sharps. If you want to find the minor key that has the same key signature, that is, the same number of flats or sharps, as the major, then you count down three half steps and that’s the starting point for your relative minor scale. Even if you don’t play an instrument you probably have access to a keyboard of some sort. So start on middle C and play just the white keys up to the next C. There’s your C major scale.

Eric Whitacre’s Sweet Seal Lullaby

December 11, 2020November 23, 2015 by debisimons

Note to readers: This post originally was originally written in reference to a Christmas concert by my own choir; thus the holiday reference.

Why are we singing a lullaby to a seal? Are seals somehow part of the Christmas story?

Let’s get the connection between seals (the animals) and Christmas out of the way first. There isn’t one. So that’s settled. (There are Christmas seals of another type,, though—remember those? The little stamps with holiday themes that you’d stick on the envelope flap of your Christmas cards? They’re issued by the American Lung Association and have been around since 1907, when the main push was to find a cure for tuberculosis. As I revise this post in the fall of 2020 they’ve shifted focus to COVID-19. You can still order them and also post them digitally to Facebook, etc.)

The Music of the Angels On Christmas Eve 1913

December 11, 2020November 8, 2015 by debisimons

What is the significance of the year 1913 in “Noël: Christmas Eve, 1913”?

At first I vaguely thought that the year must be a historical reference, possibly to World War I. But of course WWI didn’t start until 1914, so that idea was a non-starter, although Europe, particularly the Balkans, was in the middle of a spate of smaller conflicts in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Great War. There is no information about the original poem in any of the biographical information I’ve come across on its author, Robert Bridges. He’s a fascinating character, though, who was England’s poet laureate from 1913-1930 but whose early career was as a doctor. He became a recognized poet only late in life but had always been interested in writing; he originally planned to retire from medicine at age 40 to devote himself to that pursuit. Life intervened, as it usually does, and he was actually forced to retire at age 38 because of lung disease. He lived until 85, though, so he had a good long time to write and produced volumes of poetry, verse dramas, hymns, and literary criticism. His deep Christian faith is reflected in many of his poems.

A Devilish Serenade

October 21, 2024October 18, 2015 by debisimons

Note to readers: This post isn’t actually about choral music but about an operatic aria. If you like Gounod’s Faust, though, I think you’ll enjoy reading the following:

The Faust of the title appears in many legends about this whole idea that it’s possible to make a bargain with the Prince of Darkness to have unlimited happiness on earth, but there always comes a day when the price has to be paid. In most of the legends the so-called happiness that’s supposed to come begins to sour long before the end comes; this souring has certainly happened by the time of the aria. Faust has gained youth, wealth, and the love of Marguerite, but now he stands fearfully outside her house where she lives as an outcast from the village after bearing his child. He is with Mephistopheles, the demon who has carried out the contract negotiations and become his companion in worldly and depraved pleasures. (The word “mephistopheles” itself is most likely from the Hebrew words “mephitz” meaning “destroyer” and “tophel,” meaning “liar.”) It’s night, but there is a light in Marguerite’s window. The following dialogue comes immediately before Mephistophele’s aria:

A Litany of Sad Lives–but with a Prayer for Hope and Peace

December 11, 2020October 12, 2015 by debisimons

I first had the opportunity to sing Franz Schubert’s lovely “Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen” (Litany for the Feast of All Souls) in a concert with a Hallowe’en theme. Weird, huh? Well, actually not. I’m going to take a little time here to explain this Roman Catholic holiday, an occasion that’s not at all well known today. There are actually three holidays in a row right at the beginning of winter: Halloween, or “All Hallows’ Eve,” “All Hallows’ (or “All Saints'”) Day,” Nov. 1, and then “All Souls’ Day,” Nov. 2. These three days together form “Hallowmas Season.” I’d encourage you to follow the link above to my other article if you want more information. Basically, though, what it boils down to is that the Roman Catholic church, and to some extent other denominations, took advantage of existing traditions in pagan cultures and put a Christianized spin on them. As winter approached it was natural to think of the death of loved ones as the year itself was dying. The saints (those who, according to RC doctrine, were especially holy) got their day first on Nov. 1, and then everyone else (“all souls”) came in on Nov. 2.

Monsters at the Concert

December 11, 2020October 3, 2015 by debisimons

Back in October 2015 my choir gave a concert titled “BOO!” We had so much fun with doing a Halloween-themed program. Here are three short essays about songs we sang that include some kind of monster theme.

A Medley from Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas”

December 11, 2020September 28, 2015 by debisimons

Medleys from musicals or films are a popular way for a choir to be able to give its audience a taste of the original without having to worry about staging the entire work. Listeners who are familiar with the source material will be given an opportunity to hear it in a different venue; listeners who aren’t familiar with it may be encouraged to seek it out. These opportunities also apply to the performers. For instance, I had never seen Guys and Dolls, but when my own choir performed a medley from that musical, I was inspired to watch the film. And the same thing happened to me with Nightmare. I have to say that it sounded pretty icky to me when we first got our music, but I decided to watch the movie anyway so that I’d have a good basis for this post. Guess what? I totally fell in love with it. So very, very creative!

Is There Any Truth at all to the Story of the “Phantom of the Opera”?

December 11, 2020September 21, 2015 by debisimons

Phantom of the Opera Mask

It’s always fascinating to search for the inspiration of a creative work, and that’s certainly true of The Phantom of the Opera. I tried to read the original 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux after seeing a performance of the musical some years ago, but I found it to be pretty much impenetrable. (And I just took a look at it again before writing this post; it hasn’t changed.) To me there were two questions I wanted to answer: 1) What is the reason for the Phantom’s physical disfigurement? And 2) What so-called “real events” gave rise to the legend of the Phantom in the first place?

There doesn’t seem to be any reason given for the Phantom’s horrible face in the original novel, which describes it as a “noseless, lipless, sunken-eyed face which resembles a skull dried up by the centuries, covered in yellowed dead flesh.” It is simply the way the child, christened Erik, was born. The epilogue of the novel gives a brief synopsis of Erik’s early life, saying that his own mother couldn’t stand the sight of him and he therefore ran away from home as soon as he could, with the intriguing tidbit that his father (who died before the Phantom’s birth) was a master builder. While I couldn’t get into the original version by Leroux, I found the1990 novel Phantom by Susan Kay to be utterly compelling. If you’d like to read a re-telling of the Phantom story told with great empathy from several points of view I’d recommend this book. Kay adds some intriguing twists to the story at the end, but I won’t tell you what they are! In a couple of film versions there are specific reasons given for the deformity: an acid attack and an accident with a record presser. (That second one is set within the cutthroat world of the early music industry.)

What’s the meaning of the weird ingredients in “Double Trouble”?

December 11, 2020September 11, 2015 by debisimons

This selection is from the third film in the Harry Potter franchise, HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s performed by the Frog Choir, a group of Hogwarts students who don’t appear in any of the actual books but whom J. K. Rowling really loved when she saw them in the movie. They perform at the welcoming feast that begins the new school term and each carries a toad, one of which croaks during the song. (Why aren’t they called the Toad Choir? I don’t know.) The music is, of course, by John Williams. Isn’t everything?

Has the Chorale Gone Over to the Dark Side by Having a Halloween Concert?

October 21, 2024September 6, 2015 by debisimons

Years ago a woman I knew said that she had become concerned that by celebrating Halloween she was advocating wickedness and evil, and she had decided to stop doing it. Apparently she had been into this holiday big time, with tons of decorations and traditions, probably up to and including cakes sporting spiders and fake cobwebs strewn everywhere. She threw it all out and explained to her kids that they would no longer be participating in any of these activities. She substituted a more innocuous “harvest” holiday, so they didn’t miss out entirely.

I’d be the last person to criticize this woman. She was totally sincere and believed that she was doing right by her family. And yet . . . in order to be perfectly consistent, she would have had to also eliminate Christmas and Easter celebrations from her household as well. Both of those Christian holidays have traditions with pagan roots.