A Brief History of Holiday Music by Robert Greenberg

I love this man. Robert Greenberg just loves music - well, classical music. Don't ask him about popular music, but he will tell you some fascinating stuff about Bach, Beethoven, and other composers. It's hard not to get enthused about this type of music when you listen to his lectures, and if you are already a bit of a classical music enthusiast, it's just so much the better. He is really informative and funny.

This was a free offering from Audible at Christmas. There was never a truer title of any book. I think the whole thing is 45 minutes long. And while he mentions in passing Jingle Bells and Mariah Carey (among others) he doesn't talk about them in the lecture. He does point out that popular music isn't his thing, but his idea of holiday music is not my idea of holiday music. The closest he gets is talking about the Hallelujah Chorus (and oddly enough, doesn't play the well-known part of) and the Nutcracker Suite (which is the first major work to use an instrument called a celesta - so see you do learn something). He talks about plainchant and the Christmas mass as well.

This is not my holiday music. There's not even much history to it. Brief, though, that it is. But he's just so fun to listen to that it still makes it enjoyable. Perhaps The Great Courses should consider renaming it.

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