by Eric Sellen

EVEN THOUGH The Cleveland Orchestra’s very first public concerts were presented during the last month of the year — on December 11 and 22, 1918 — it was not until the following season that the Orchestra played special holiday music for the first time.  And it was nearly 30 more years before Christmas music became a regular part of the Orchestra’s schedule, eventually to grow into the multi-weekends of seasonal music of recent seasons.

       Christmas music was first presented by The Cleveland Orches-tra at the “Popular Concert” of December 28, 1919, when the orchestral “Pastorale” from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was performed on a program with a number of non-Christmas favorites and an audience sing-along on “O Come, All Ye Faithfull.”  The concert ended with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture — music then considered to be a year-round festival piece and much less associated with the Fourth of July than it is today.

       The following year, 1920, the Orchestra again presented excerpts from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, at a December “Popular Concert” — this time with the debut performance of the original (but short-lived) Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.  

       In December 1925, selections from Handel’s Messiah were presented for the first time by the Orchestra in Cleveland (with the exception of the “Hallelujah” Chorus).  In previous seasons they’d presented selections only during tours out of town.  Over the following two decades, Christmas and other holiday music appeared occasionally on special winter concerts, several of which were performed on January 1.  A variety of local choruses joined the Orchestra for some of these concerts.  In another indication of how the past is different from today, regular subscription concerts were actually played on Christmas Day three times during the 1930s, but without including holiday music.  

        Finally, on December 22, 1940, the first Cleveland Orchestra concert labelled a “Christmas Program” was presented at a 5:00 p.m. Twilight Concert at Severance Hall. The performance, which opened with the “Pastorale Symphony” from Messiah and concluded with Enesco’s First Roumanian Rhapsody, included both holiday and non-holiday music.

       Over the next dozen years, these Christmas programs became more-or-less annual affairs (in 1943, the holiday program was presented on the regular subscription series rather than as a separate concert, and a couple of years seem to have missed out on orchestral holiday music-making entirely).  In the early 1950s, the focus shifted briefly toward a Viennese-style New Year’s concert.

       The Cleveland Orchestra Christmas Concerts as we know them today can be traced back to the hiring of Robert Shaw in 1956 as the Orchestra’s associate conductor. Shaw’s Christmas program that first year was orchestral only and included Mozart’s Sleigh Ride, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, and Leroy Anderson’s Christmas Festival.

       In 1957, The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus — organized anew in 1952 by George Szell and then entrusted to Shaw’s expert care — was featured on the concert and, with a few exceptions, Chorus and Orchestra together became standard holiday fare from then on. During his tenure, Shaw presented a potpourri of works on each annual holiday concert, from traditional carols to bread-and-butter classics of the season by Vivaldi, Britten, Bach, and Tchaikovsky.

       Margaret Hillis, who in 1969 became the Orchestra’s director of choruses, programmed heavily from the serious classical Christmas repertoire during her two-year tenure; her 1970 concert, for instance, was an all-Bach affair.  In 1971, new chorus direction Robert Page returned to a wider variety of holiday music-making. And what had been only one performance of the Christmas concert each year soon blossomed into two and then into multiple performances (often with slight variations of repertoire between concerts).  The Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus began joining in on some afternoons and, across the past quarter century, a variety of guest choruses from local colleges and universities have regularly joined together with the singers of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus.

       Each year, these much-anticipated concerts bring holiday spirit to thousands of Cleveland-area residents.  Although cancelled this season due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, online programming will still offer musical spirit and comfort for 2020. 

by Eric Sellen

FEW THINGS remind us more quickly of the Christmas season than the sound of a favorite carol, song, or phrase of holiday music.  Beyond thoughts of the Christmas Story itself, few things are as sure to set us smiling, humming, and looking forward to annual greetings and visits from family and friends.  The rituals of baking, shopping, and hanging decorations are amplified with the simple pleasure of listening to some of the beautiful music inspired by this December holiday.

       While music specifically associated with Christmas can be dated back at least as far as the 13th century, many of today’s favorite Christmas carols and songs were created in the past 300 years.  “Adeste Fideles” was written in 1782, “Silent Night” in 1818, and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849.  Many composers have been inspired by the Christmas Story to write great music — from Bach’s Magnificat (1723) and Christmas Oratorio (1734) to Handel’s Messiah (1741), from Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ (“The Childhood of Christ,” 1854) to Johannes Brahms’s arrangement of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” (1896), and into the 20th century with such well-known collections as Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols (1942) or the many carol and song arrangements created by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker — and more recent songs for the season by Mel Tormé, John Rutter, Paul McCartney, Vince Gill, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Pentatonix, and others. 

       Throughout the 19th century, a renewed interest in (and commercialization of) Christmas saw the growth of many traditions — including the custom of decorating a Christmas tree (popularized in Great Britain by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert), the manufacturing of many new kinds of seasonal decorations, the 
writing of many new Christmas stories (including the publication of “The Night Before Christmas” in 1823 and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in 1843), and the widespread adoption of St. Nicholas (soon to be called Santa Claus) as customary parts of the season. 

       Musical offerings also expanded, with the planning of ever-more elaborate and festive presentations to celebrate the season in sound.  In America, such inspirational 20th-century choral leaders as Fred Waring and Robert Shaw helped popularize new songs and new arrangements, while major orchestras, new brass ensembles, and groups like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir helped fill the airwaves through special Christmas recordings — and inspired ensembles throughout the country to offer annual holiday concerts.  Such performances are today one of the season’s most eagerly awaited traditions, filling concert halls from coast to coast with beloved music and the spirit of Christmas.