Forget Mariah Carey: A guide to vintage X-mas carols

Editor’s Note: Classical music of any kind often feels boring and inaccessible—but not with Narendra Kusnur. He offers an accessible and fun guide to Western classical music—which has shaped movie soundtracks and top 40 hits alike. 

This month’s guide takes us on a journey through popular Christmas carols and their, sometimes unlikely origin stories. As always, we’ve put all the music referenced in the article in a YouTube playlist for you to enjoy.

Written by: Narendra Kusnur has been a music journalist for over 40 years—including a decade-long stint covering the beat at the Mid-Day newspaper. He currently writes for The Hindu, Free Press Journal, Hindustan Times, and Rolling Stone India—besides the in-house magazines of prestigious institutions—such as NCPA and Shanmukhananda Hall.

It’s that time of the year when jingle bells ring and Santa Claus comes to town. There will be dinner spreads to feast on, music to play, waltzes to dance. But rather than the routine fare of Jim Reeves, Mariah Carey or even Bob Dylan’s album ‘Christmas In The Heart’, how about some vintage classical music? Or carols played by orchestras, or in the movies?

Let’s begin with carols. The first would be ‘Silent Night’, a staple every Christmas. There is some interesting trivia behind the song, first performed 206 years ago, originally in German. It so happened that on Christmas Eve in 1818, the organ at the church in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria, had been found damaged. Out of helplessness, the young priest Joseph Mohr asked Franz Xaver Gruber, a schoolmaster, to set his poem ‘Stille Nacht’ to music, with guitar accompaniment. The song became extremely popular and was translated into English in 1859. During the Christmas truce of 1914 during World War I, the carol was sung simultaneously by English and German troops. 

Let’s hear two versions of the carol by two British orchestras. This one’s a vocal one by the Canterbury Cathedral Girls Choir: 

And here’s an instrumental rendition by the Philharmonia Orchestra.

‘Silent Night’ is not to be confused with ‘O Holy Night’ which is of French origin. It dates back to 1847 when wine seller Placidde Cappeau was asked by a local parish priest to write a festive poem to mark his church’s renovations. He approached his friend Adolphe Adams to compose the music. The English lyrics were later written by John Sullivan Dwight, who was also considered America’s first influential music critic. While the song has been performed by numerous classical and pop artists—here’s a clip used in a church scene in the 1990 Macaulay Culkin film ‘Home Alone’.

Talking of ‘Home Alone’, the 1992 sequel featured another famous Christmas song ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, also called ‘Adeste Fideles’. It is played by a symphony orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall. It’s unclear who wrote the original hymn, but the English lyrics are credited to British priest Frederick Oakeley. Here’s the ‘Home Alone 2’ clip.

This is Dan Forrest’s arrangement featuring a combined orchestra from Brigham Young University in the US.

Two other songs that are on most playlists are ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’, one of the oldest carols dating back to the 16th century, and ‘Joy To The World’, written by Isaac Watts and named the most published Christmas hymn in North America. 

Here, we have an orchestral version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ by rock band Jethro Tull, led by flautist Ian Anderson, accompanied by the Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt. 

Below is ‘Joy To The World’—performed by Irish ensemble Celtic Woman at a live performance in Dublin.

Christmassy classical compositions

Besides the carols, many classical compositions are perfect for Christmas. The next few pieces are lively and melodic in their own right, and we have chosen clips of the classical performances, rather than describe how they have been used in popular culture.

The one most regularly played over the years is ‘The Nutcracker Suite,’ a ballet created by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892. Based on a short story by ETA Hoffman, the ballet is set on Christmas Eve on the foot of a Christmas tree in a child’s imagination. Some common pieces played during the festive season are ‘Trepak’, ‘The Waltz Of The Flowers’ and ‘The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy’. Here’s a clip from the performance of ‘Trepak’ by the Bolshoi Ballet in 2018. The choreography is outstanding.

More than 150 years before the ‘Nutcracker’ in 1734, Johann Sebastian Bach had created the ‘Christmas Oratorio’ as a six-part piece to be played over church service over six days beginning Christmas. The full oratorio lasts three hours and in concerts, it is divided into two halves. For a minor feel, let’s take a look at this three-minute clip from a performance by German Brass in 2016, filmed in the cathedral in Freiburg, Germany. It brims with melody.

Also from the Baroque era that lasted till 1760 or thereabouts, is George Frideric Handel’s famous ‘Messiah’. The piece was originally written for Easter-time and was premiered in Dublin on April 13, 1742. However, over the years, beginning in the US, its ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ began to be played around Christmas. The tune has also been used in the films ‘Dumb And Dumber’ (1994), ‘Face/ Off’ (1997) and ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ (2001). Here’s a performance conducted by Sir Colin Davis for the London Symphony Orchestra and the Tenebrae Choir.

Enjoy this trailer of the Jim Carrey-Jeff Daniels film ‘Dumb And Dumber 2,’ using the chorus.

Also from the 18th century is Austrian genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ‘Sleigh Ride’, which was the last part of the ‘Three German Dances’ he released 10 months before his death on December 5, 1791. Mozart added sleigh bells to create a wintry effect. 

Interestingly, Mozart’s father Leopold Mozart had written a ‘Sleigh Ride’. Many years later, in 1938, American composer Leroy Anderson wrote another ‘Sleigh Ride’, which was covered by several artists including the Ronettes and Gwen Stefani. Let’s stick to Wolfgang Mozart’s creation here, played by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Among 20th-century pieces, one of the most popular Christmas tunes—and a huge hit on the radio—is Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’, taken from his ‘Lieutenant Kife Suite’ of 1934. The ‘troika’ refers to the Russian three-horse sled of the same name, and the music depicts a fast sleigh ride. The piece was also used in the instrumental part of the song ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake, a member of the British progressive rock group Emerson Lake & Palmer.

Here’s the original—played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Tugan Sokhiev in Berlin in 2019.

This is Greg Lake’s version—which he wrote in 1977.

There are also those, like Austrian composer Franz Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, which were written in other contexts, but became part of the Xmas repertoire. Of course, no Christmas party is complete without ‘Jingle Bells’. It’s sung by almost everyone but only some know it was written by American artiste James Lord Pierpont in 1850, and first published under the title ‘The One Horse Open Sleigh’. We conclude with two versions — the regular rendition by the Tabernacle Choir of the US:

And a funny one where Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli is joined by The Muppets. Merry Christmas to everyone!

Those are our classical and spiritual recommendations for you. If you missed Mariah Carey or Gwen Stefani or Andy Williams, you can always check out the pop playlists on the streaming platforms. As we always do, we conclude with a list of tunes we have mentioned. Enjoy the music, the marzipan, a smooth mocktail, or some red, red wine.

As always have created a handy playlist of all the tracks mentioned on splainer’s YouTube channel.

PS: If you need a list of all the amazing music shared by Naren:

• ‘Silent Night’ by Franz Xaver Gruber, performed by Canterbury Cathedral Girls Choir
• Instrumental rendition of ‘Silent Night’ by Philharmonia Orchestra.
• ‘O Holy Night’ by Adolphe Adams from ‘Home Alone’
• Traditional Christmas carol—‘O Come All Ye Faithful’
• ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ from ‘Home Alone 2’
• Orchestral version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ by Jethro Tull
• ‘Joy To The World’ by Isaac Watts, performed by Irish ensemble Celtic Woman
•  ‘Trepak’ by the Bolshoi Ballet in 2018. 
• ‘Christmas Oratorio’ by Johann Sebastian Bach 
• Hallelujah Chorus by George Frideric Handel 
• Hallelujah Chorus in  ‘Dumb And Dumber 2’
• Sleigh Ride by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 
• ‘Troika’ by Sergei Prokofiev
• ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake
• ‘Jingle Bells’ by Tabernacle Choir
• ‘Jingle Bells’ by Andrea Bocelli plus The Muppets.