Tat

Having spent a few days on long drives to visit relatives, I've come to the conclusion that any music that begins with a prevalence of glockenspiel is tat.

Lately, we have begun listening only to NPR, and on travels, only classical NPR. Unfortunately, classical music in rural America is mostly big orchestral schmaltz. Today, we turned on the radio to be greeted by Leroy Anderson's Piano Concerto, a "weighty" piece consisting of nearly-show-tunes interspersed with Warsaw Concerto-like lyrical pseudo-angst. That bored us for a good 20 minutes or so. It was followed by the "great" Chicago composer William Force, a man who I had only stumbled across in crossword puzzles. This was a piece that he composed while teaching a class (I think at the New England Conservatory) to which no students turned up. (I wonder why!) While not teaching his class, he perused some Christmas Hymns/Poetry, namely In the Bleak Midwinter by Rossetti. Still bored, he decided to write a piece that incorporated his own setting of the poem. The result was a piece reminiscent of shlocky American concert band music, but for orchestra, that used way too much glockenspiel throughout, but it was very obvious right from the start. GAH!!!!!!!! Thank you Mr Force for extending your boredom to the rest of us.

The highlight of our holiday listening experiences was Frank Ferko's Festival of Carols that he wrote for the Dale Warland singers. (Warland was the special guest of the program.) We know Frank from our Chicago days, but haven't heard anything new of his in a long time.  (We've grown out of touch.)  His Hildegard pieces are sublime, and this is nearly as good.

Oddly enough, Frank's piece doesn't begin with lots of Glockenspiel. (What might that say about it?)