Month: December 2023

TBT^2: “Silent Night” Turns 200

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On Tuesday’s edition of Open Mic Adventures I shared my impromptu rendition of “Silent Night“; as such, I figured I’d throwback to this classic post about the timeless Christmas classic for this installment of TBT.

I’ve always loved the sweet, peaceful simplicity of this carol.  It also lends itself to multiple interpretations.  My Middle School Music Ensemble students have done it in 4/4 in a punk rock style.  One year, my High School Music Ensemble played it as a bluesy, Christmas-Eve-at-a-roadside-honkey-tonk jam in 6/8 (but, as I recall, only in practice—that might have been too bold for the sensibilities of my administration).

But the song is best presented as it was 205 years ago:  sung by a small choir on a cold Christmas night.

With that, here is 12 December 2019’s “TBT: ‘Silent Night’ Turns 200“:

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Open Mic Adventures LX: “Silent Night”

The Portly Politico4 Comments

We’re getting into the cozy part of the Christmas season, with plenty of cold nights spent bundled up by the light of the Christmas tree, sipping hot chocolate and wearing sweaters.  It’s the hygge, and yours portly couldn’t be happier.

Naturally, all this cozy Christmas cheer gets me thinking about Christmas carols, and few carols capture the quiet peace of Christmas quite like “Silent Night.”

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Memorable Monday Morning Movie Review: A Very Portly Christmas: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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With Christmas Break looms large, I’m taking it a bit easier with the old blog.  I’ve seen some great—and not-so-great—movies lately, but they can wait a few weeks for 2024.

Instead, I thought I’d take a look back at a timeless Christmas classic of yesteryear, a film I reviewed along with Audre Myers and Ponty during the 2022 Christmas season.

That film, of course, is 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  It’s a film that is somehow more than a mere movie.  It’s a flick that can be judged and appreciated as a movie, of course, but it’s also one that transcends the medium, and is part of the whole Zeitgeist of Christmas.  It’s hard to separate it from the very notion of “Christmas.”

With that, here’s my review from last year:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXI: Chapel Lessons, Part II

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It’s another Lazy Sunday, and another look back at some of my short chapel devotionals:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Concert 2023 Review

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Eight days ago (Friday, 8 December 2023), my students had their annual Christmas Concert.  The Christmas Concert is one of the two marquee concert events of the school year, the other being the more amorphous Spring Concert, which can fall pretty much anywhere between March and April (and even early May).  Of the two, the Christmas Concert is my favorite, and while it’s also one of the most stressful days of the year, it’s also one of my favorites.

Our Christmas Concert follows a predictable format, consisting of performances from our choir, our World Language classes, and finally from my Middle School and High School Music Ensembles.  Historically, dance classes have performed pieces prior to the musical portion of the concert, but this year marked the first that dances were not included, as the dance class performed before the Christmas Musical, which was on Friday, 1 December 2023.

Honestly, excluding dances was a major improvement.  I have nothing (well, not much) against dance as an art form, but it was never a comfortable fit in an already-overstuffed Christmas concert format.  It also adds some minor additional headaches for yours portly, who in the past has had to move pianos in the middle of the concert to accommodate the dancers.  At the risk of editorializing (but isn’t that the whole point of a blog?), I find most of these “dance” routines to be rather distasteful and a tad lurid, although I am to report that this year’s dance performance was really exceptional, tasteful, and beautiful.

But I digress.  What of the music itself?  Let’s dig in, like a Wisconsin dad shoveling snow.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Phone it in Friday XLV: My Tacky Christmas Tree

The Portly Politico8 Comments

I finally groped my way up to the attic (my ankle is healed enough to allow it now) and pulled down the Christmas tree I purchased a few years ago.  It was well past time.  I still have a couple of Halloween decorations hanging up—yeesh!

Being one to never let a good thing go to waste, I decided to take some pictures of my tree, as well as make a video showcasing the little guy in all his multicolored glory.

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TBT: Joy to the World

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Somehow, I have not reblogged my 2019 post about “Joy to the World,” one of my favorite Christmas carols, in four years!

I’ve always loved the bouncy, joyful nature of this piece, and I almost always program it for our annual Christmas Concert.  Indeed, this year my Middle School Music Ensemble students performed it.  While we’re working on the piece, I always give my students a little speech to try to get them into the spirit of the piece.  Essentially, I tell them to imagine what it would have been like to be a shepherd on that starlit night, and for a heavenly host of infinite singing angels to burst suddenly into the sky, belting out “For Unto Us a Child Is Born!”

Our goal, I tell my students, is to capture some fraction of the overawing joy and majesty of that moment when we perform “Joy to the World.”

With that, here is 10 December 2019’s “Joy to the World“:

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LEGO® Star Wars™ 2023 Advent Calendar Part I: Days 1-8

The Portly Politico8 Comments

For the past couple of years or so I’ve been treating myself to a LEGO® Star Wars™ Advent Calendar.  I enjoy the ritual of building each day’s tiny set, and it’s cool getting some unique builds and minifigs (the name of the little LEGO® people).

I seem to recall the calendars being around $20 on sale.  This year, the full-price MSRP was something like $46, which is outrageous, but I got mine on sale for about $33. That’s honestly not terrible for a LEGO® set, which is essentially what this calendar is.

Of course, yours portly never lets anything go to waste, and I’ve turned my calendar into an opportunity to churn out YouTube content.  As such, I thought I’d catch everyone up on the first eight days of Advent calendar fun.

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Open Mic Adventures LIX: “Listless Chorale”

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Okay, I’ll admit—this week’s Open Mic Adventure is a bit of filler.  Even the best albums have some filler, right?

I really have been trying to up the content game a bit lately, but in an effort to work ahead on the blog a bit, I’m digging deep into some compositions that are really more exercises for me than intended for general consumption.

Still, I thought this piece would give a bit of an insight into how I go about composing, specifically when I write chorales.  I like to try to challenge myself to link together a single note across multiple measures in one or two of the voices, morphing the other voices around those pedal tones.  The challenge comes in trying to find chords that fit these pedal points.

“Listless Chorale” is one such attempt.  I’ll confess, I’m not totally pleased with the outcome—thus the “listless” in the title, as it feels like it’s not really moving anywhere—but you might find some beauty in its harmonies.

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