大象传媒

Christmas with Arnold Schoenberg, They Might be Giants and South Park: In Tune's Alternative Seasonal Mixtape brings us music the supermarkets won't be playing this Christmas.

The Twelve Tones of Christmas is not what we get with Arnold Schoenberg's Weihnachtsmusik, a fantasia on two Christmas carols written in 1921. The German Christmas classic O Tannenbaum follows, as interpreted by American alt rock band They Might be Giants, then Graham Fitkin's harp version of the Cornish Sans Day Carol. Sonny Boy Williamson II sings his personal Christmas Day Blues, and the South Park team give us a softly sung but hard-hitting parody of Christmas sentimentalism, reminding us of our own mortality while encouraging us to value each day of life. We travel back 700 years for the Latin carol Angelus ad Virginem, then return to the 21st century for O Magnum Mysterium set by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. The Music Lab Collective highlight the rich harmonic progressions in Mariah Carey's All I want for Christmas is You, and finally Michael Praetorius gloriously mashes up the medieval German carol In Dulci Jubilo.