Time for a change of pace. The Roches’ We Three Kings—great album title—is one of the canonical Christmas albums—no collection of Christmas music should be without it. Here are the Roches doing […]

Some songs travel through the centuries, evolving and reshaping themselves in the hands of different composers. In dulci jubilo is one of our greatest carols, and has come down from a simple […]

And on to medieval Germany, where so much great Christmas music comes from. In this case, we’ll start out with Michael Praetorius, Germany’s first great composer, who brought us, among other things, […]

And while we’re considering 20th century British composers and the thousands of great Christmas choral songs they’ve produced, here’s John Gardner’s updated 1960s version of TSBMDD, which first appeared in a choral […]

British composers had good run this past century composing Christmas songs. One of my favorites Is William Walton’s “What Cheer?” Walton composed some great choral pieces, but was better known for his […]

Not an oxymoron—Scandinavians take Christmas seriously, as anyone who has been to any of the major cities at Christmas knows. In spite of Scandinavian Noir and those gripping television shows, Christmas in […]

Or, as it has been known for 600 years, “Greensleeves.” This is a lovely version by Liz Story, pianist extraordinaire, from her Christmas album, The Gift. The lyrics to “What Child is […]

Another wonderful 20th century piece, one I was unfamiliar with before moving to England. The not-at-all-apocryphal story is that Peter Warlock (music) and Bruce Blunt (lyrics), broke and living in the country, […]

I’m a really big Dar Williams fan. And I’m a huge Christmas music fan. So it makes complete sense for this to show up here:

We’re going to post something neat every day. It’s the season for fantastic music, and since we have impeccable taste, we’re going to be posting some impeccable stuff–lovely, but not your usual […]