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Related: About this forum"Do You Hear What I Hear?" is an anti-war song written while America was on the brink of nuclear war
Do You Hear What I Hear?
By Wook KimDec. 17, 20120
Do You Hear What I Hear? is an anti-war songwritten while America was on the brink of nuclear war.
The song was written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shaynetalk about Christmas-ready names!during October of 1961. At that time, the U.S. was facing down the Soviet Union over some medium-range missiles on an island nation in the Caribbean. The Cuban Missile Crisis weighed heavily on the married songwriting team (who switched their traditional music-lyric roles for this song)Shayne was especially moved by the sight of mothers pushing baby carriages on a city street.
A singlerecorded by the same chorale group that had a radio hit with The Little Drummer Boy a few years earlierwas released a few weeks later. The songs plea for peace and goodness and light struck a chord with an anxious public and sold more than 250,000 copiesand was soon part of the modern holiday canon.
I didn't know this. One of the comments at youtube:
As Christmas song it's about Jesus, but that's not all. The daughter of the composers says: I dont know to this day how many people hear that line and think when they hear a tail as big as a kite and think of bombs, but thats certainly what [my father] was thinking about.
"A star dancing in the night with a tail as big as a kite" -- rocket engines exuding fire and followed by 'a tail' of exhaust. In the story of Jesus, the star hung unmoving, it neither danced nor had a tail.
1monster
(11,012 posts)According to YouTube, the song was written in 1962, not 1961. The Cuban Missile Crisis was also in Ocotober of 1962.
catbyte
(34,447 posts)death in 2006. I still listen to the tape of the album. My turntable died in 2008.
stopbush
(24,396 posts)They suck from a musical perspective.
Makes Les Mis sound good.
1monster
(11,012 posts)Do You Hear What I Hear, one must wonder what makes your list of good musical perspective?
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I have seen the stage play and the music is wonderful. Are we speaking of the same Les Mis?
stopbush
(24,396 posts)"The music is juvenile stufftonic-dominant, without harmonic richness or surprise. Listen to any score by Richard Rodgers or Leonard Bernstein or Fritz Loewe if you want to hear genuine melodic invention. I was so upset by the banality of the music that I felt like hiring a hall and staging a nationalist rally."
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/theres-still-hope-for-people-who-love-les-miserables.html#ixzz2HM1LnDfw
1monster
(11,012 posts)Methinks that the review was written by someone who feels himself relevant only when belittling that which he will NEVER in his wildest dreams attain... And I enjoy Rodgers, Bernstein, and Lowe, but I doubt that any of them would ever put down the music as without harmonic richness or surprise, or any other put down.
The end of Act I alone refutes the "without harmonic richness" and "melodic invention..." And I've seen people moved to tears by The Prayer (Bring Him Home).
No one said you had to love the musical (my husband did not enjoy the play). But that review and your agreement with it gives me the impression that neither of you really know anything about harmonic richness or melodic invention.
I could understand if you just said it didn't speak to you or that you just couldn't get into it or you just didn't like it -- not everyone enjoys the same things. But far too many people, some very musically knowledgeable and some not at all, have found the musical Lex Miserables to be brilliant for said reviewer's opinion to hold any significance...
ON EDIT: From the same review! On this quote alone, I rest my case. (He wanted DANCING and high fashion in a period TRAGEDY? ...)
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/01/theres-still-hope-for-people-who-love-les-miserables.html#ixzz2HMAH204u
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)stopbush
(24,396 posts)My musical credentials are deep enough for me to have an educated opinion on music.
I find the music of Les Mis to be incredibly forgettable. In fact, I am struck by the fact that after working in the music biz for the past 40 years, having played in and conducted orchestras and choruses, having produced numerous CD recordings, being a voting member of NARAS etc, that the music of Les Mis fails to stay in my musical memory. Every time I hear music from this show is like hearing it the first time, because it just doesn't make any impression on me.
The truth is that it would make more of an impression were it really awful. But it isn't as much awful as it is banal and forgettable.
Larrymoe Curlyshemp
(111 posts)Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)I remember singing the songs for my grandmother one Christmas.
When I was a tad older, I couldn't understand the part where the king proclaims "A child, a child, shivers in the cold. Let us bring him silver and gold", when the biblical account had the local king Herod ordering the execution of all male infants up to age 2.