# Best Christmas music



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Recommended CD - Classical-style music based on Christmas melodies, all of it very welcome. This CD has served here for several years. If you're a Prime member, you can stream it.

https://www.amazon.com/Carol-Sympho...=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1544773388&sr=1-2


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

This is real fun. Great selection. Try Joan Sutherland singing 'The twelve days of Christmas'

Got this for less than a pound in charity shop. 2 CDs too! í ½í¸„


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

A few favorites, in no particular order.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Christmas at the Time of Praetorius: Margot Guilleaume, Helmut Krebs





Schütz - Magnifikat "Christmas Story"


----------



## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Paul Hillier's "Carols from the Old and New Worlds" is good: https://www.amazon.com/Carols-Old-Worlds-Paul-Hillier/dp/B0000007DK

There are two more volumes.

(Should note, it's not all exactly classical style, but close enough.)


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

This year, these two:


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Outstanding renditions of carols from the Renaissance to the present. Or at least "the present" being when this was recorded.


----------



## 13hm13 (Oct 31, 2016)

*Samuel Barber: Die Natali Op. 36 (1960)*

Christmas music? 
How about ALL of it in about 20 min.?

Samuel Barber: Die Natali Op. 36 (1960)


----------



## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

Weihnachts-Oratorium, BWV 248


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Messiaen - Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus (Steven Osborne)


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I agree with the Schütz and J.S. Bach recommendations.

Other favorites: 
Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker
Bartók: Romanian Christmas Carols
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols


----------



## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

I don't really 'do' Christmas but there are about 6 Christmas songs I really like. This is one.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Nobody seems to have mentioned Slade yet. Very odd.


----------



## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Nobody seems to have mentioned Slade yet. Very odd.


Or the dreaded Pogues. I think we're trying to stick to classical or nearly.


----------



## Malx (Jun 18, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Nobody seems to have mentioned Slade yet. Very odd.


Been mentioned now!


----------



## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

Honegger - Une cantate de Noël


----------



## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)




----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The thread seems to have gone in the direction of the popular or commercial. I suppose the obvious candidates (Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Handel's Messiah) are just too obvious ... or so good that you don't need a seasonal excuse to listen to them. But I recently listened to this CD (which is also good enough to listen to any time) that may be less obvious.









And then there is this - a work I grew to love before I got a bit bored of Adams' sameness or limited language (perhaps I am unfair).


----------



## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)




----------



## LezLee (Feb 21, 2014)




----------



## Frank Freaking Sinatra (Dec 6, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> Nobody seems to have mentioned Slade yet. Very odd.


Coming out of my self-imposed retirement one last time to celebrate and encourage those courageous souls amongst us who persevere in attempting to use their sense of humour to brighten our lives in these days of darkness despite the almost heart-breaking lack of appreciation and the resultant despair and discouragement at making further attempts.

@Eugeneonagain - I read this and laughed... out loud - it's really quite hilarious... - very well phrased - :tiphat:

In regards to "Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade -

"Released at the peak of the band's popularity, "Merry Xmas Everybody" sold over a million copies upon its first release. It is Slade's last number-one single, and by far their best-selling single. It has been released during every decade since 1973, and has been covered by numerous artists. The single was certified UK Platinum by BPI in December 1980. Since 2007 and the advent of downloads counting towards the UK Singles Chart, it has re-entered the charts each December. As of December 2012, it has sold 1.21 million copies in the UK."

""Merry Xmas Everybody" is played regularly at UK nightclubs and on TV or radio stations around Christmas. It is included on numerous Christmas-themed compilation albums and several of Slade's subsequent compilation albums. Despite the song's popularity it became the band's last number-one hit."

"The song charted in every year in the early half of the 1980s, and again in 1998 and every year since 2006. Peter Buckley describes the song in The Rough Guide To Rock as "arguably the best Christmas single ever". This opinion was reflected in a 2007 poll carried out by MSN Music, where it was voted the UK's most popular Christmas song."

"Noddy Holder has referred to the song as his pension scheme, reflecting its continuing popularity and the royalties it generates. In 2015 it was estimated that the song generates £500,000 of royalties per year. The song has been credited with popularizing the annual race for the UK Christmas Number One Single."

It's close enough to "classical or nearly" for me and so without further ado allow me to present the second from last -


----------



## Frank Freaking Sinatra (Dec 6, 2018)

LezLee said:


> Or the dreaded Pogues. I think we're trying to stick to classical or nearly.


In regards to "the dreaded Pogues" allow me to present this information -

""Fairytale of New York" is a song written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan and recorded by their band the Pogues, featuring singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl on vocals. The song is an Irish folk-style ballad and was written as a duet, with the Pogues' singer MacGowan taking the role of the male character and MacColl the female character. It was originally released as a single on 23 November 1987 and later featured on the Pogues' 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God."

"Although the single never reached the coveted UK Christmas number one, being kept at number two on its original release in 1987 by the Pet Shop Boys' cover version of "Always on My Mind", it has proved enduringly popular with both music critics and the public: to date the song has reached the UK Top 20 on fifteen separate occasions since its original release in 1987, including every year since 2005, and was certified double platinum in the UK in 2016. As of September 2017 the song has sold 1,217,112 copies in the UK, with an additional 249,626 streaming equivalent sales, for a total of 1,466,737 combined sales.

*In the UK it is the most-played Christmas song of the 21st century.* "Fairytale of New York" has been cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in the UK and Ireland.

"Fairytale of New York was announced as Britain's "favourite Christmas song" in a 90-minute special on ITV on 22 December 2012, following a nationwide survey of ITV viewers, despite not being a Christmas song, merely set at Christmas.

Again, the song is "classical or nearly" enough for me and so once again without further ado allow me to present the last -






and to wish that both tolerance and open-mindedness would return from their exile and their pals charity and kindness (directed towards me more so than anyone else) would please come out of hiding in 2019 -

This cat is outta here...

Joyeux Noël et bonne année!


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)




----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)




----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Christmas Music of the 15th and 16th Centuries


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

some Czech baroque Christmas music (by 3 different composers). This is not obscure in the Czech Republic, but played regularly at Christmas time, so most people know the music and associate it with Christmas, although they likely do not know who composed it


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Charpentier - Pastorale sur la naissance de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ, H.483


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I love progressions like these, -so full of feeling of yearning:

*[ 1:48 ~ 1:58 ]*





*[ 1:17 ~ 1:37 ]*


----------

