December is a month for ornaments !!

I am sitting at my desk looking at the transformed living room -- the tree is up, and each year, even with the same ornaments, it looks different -- each year is a different pattern with most of the same elements, but put on differently, and making different patterns.

Why am I rabbitting on about Christmas trees in the music blog?  Well, it has to do with ornaments.  Figure that this month all of you have more than enough to do getting all the final projects done for school, and getting things done for family celebrations, so this is more of a muse about music past and present than more for your practice room.


Today, classical instrumentalists are asked, ala Dragnet, for "just the notes ma'am".  One contemporary writing on music compared us to bus drivers, who endeavor to get from point A to point B with the fewest number of wrong turns.  This state of affairs is a 20th century construction -


During every earlier 'age', ALL musicians were expected to use their minds as well as their voices and fingers -- and to 'decorate' the music on the stand with 'extra' notes that would enhance the tune.  We still hear that in jazz and pop, but it has largely disappeared from the classical.

Did you know that during the Baroque period, (think Bach, Handel, Telemann, Boismortier, and court orchestras), there were house musicians who were the after dinner entertainment, and the house composer (if there was a chef and a horse master, there was a house composer) was charged with writing at least 2 hours of new music each week for the duke/prince/king/cardinal.   Given this much inventing (not to mention the hours of writing - no copy machine, no finale computer program) and given that paper and ink were expensive, they saved on both by writing down the basics of the tune, aka a lead sheet, and relied on the skill and inventiveness of the musicians to flesh out the bare bones written down. (nb. one of the reasons that early music - baroque, classical - sounds so simple is that no one is ornamenting!)

You hear ornaments all the time in pop music, but likely do not label it as ornaments.  Ear candy for hearing ornaments -- compare "where are you Christmas" as sung in the Grinch movie by Cindy Lou Who/aka Hollie Steel vs. the same song sung by Faith Steel, in the credits of the same movie (and on the all Christmas music radio 93.9) ... you can check out both of these on itunes.

Happy merry -- may all the lights be bright and shiny, and all the wishes delivered.