I profoundly love his music.

Thanks

Thank you professor for discussing your thoughts honestly and bringing such great insight and experience to us all to explore too!

You can see that most of these pieces were chosen because they were in a t.v. series or film.

At 34:19, I could have sworn I was watching Don Music, the dramatic muppet pianist/composer from Sesame Street. 😊

As far as marketing goes, how about this slogan for the channel this week: "Why have a low-key Christmas this year when you can have a Loki Christmas instead?"

Hi, the link for Nat King Cole's the Christmas Song is missing, you may want to add it😊

Bach's Christmas Oratorio!

The first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has had two incarnations in contemporary pop music! First was the hit (mainly in North America and Australia and New Zealand) disco track, 'A Fifth of Beethoven', recorded by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band in 1976. It became the basis for Robin Thicke's hit song (particularly in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands), 'When I get You Alone', in 2002.

Merry Christmas to you and loki, this video illuminated my Christmas spirits that for some reason hadn’t really kicked in yet. Thanks for that. And lovely piano playing.

You’re right to highlight the importance of the 1940s. That’s when commercial Christmas music first took off. Before then, composers such as Ketèlbey relied on traditional songs as the basis for their Christmas novelties. For instance, his Christmas Medley Foxtrot merely adds a new rhythm to tunes that Scrooge would have known. Before then, the most quirky seasonal piece I can think of is Wolf’s setting of Goethe’s poem Epiphanias.

Love the channel, not boring at all. Be interesting to have a chat over a cup of tea 🍵

Thanks!

Thank you very much for the new pieces. I can confidently state that in the competition for ugliest Christmas sweater of 2024, you're certainly through to the knock-out stage. I only know Warlock's Capriole Suite; thanks for a new one. I thought Early Modern music wasn't averse to the odd bit of spicy harmony? But I don't know. Have a Merry Christmas, and I look forward to more videos from Loki the Canine Ventriloquist.

I hadn’t watched this video before and I’m saddened by the intro, your content is some of the best things there is on KZbin. Your style, humour and technical knowledge make you an amazing creator.

Thank you for another year of fascinating and enjoyable videos. I look forward to more next year.

What I love most about this is when you play something pretty complex by ear. I also appreciate the range of material from high-brow to popular songs. Fantastic stuff

Piano Sonata 17 is my favourite piece of music, but I have the opening bars of Fur Elise tattooed on my arm. As that was my grandfather's favourite piece and it has been played on every funeral in my family since the first time at his. I never realised the pieces had these simillarities. Thank you, this means a lot to me.

The parallels with Don Giovanni, plus the funeral overtones, plus the fantasia that seems somehow similar to Mozarts fantasia in Dmin.... Then.... 1800 isn't so long after Mozart's death in Dec 1792, and the huge disappointment Beethoven must have felt to not be able to work with him / learn from him. Given the outpouring of grief after the death of Elvis; the years that continued for many people; the shock and disbelief .... it would be expected that similar feelings were felt after the death of the first music superstar, Mozart. It sort of all makes the Sonata a tribute to Mozart, a sad reminiscence on his death too. Guess we will never know if that was in Beethoven's head as he wrote it. That could explain why it's so moving. I've never been able to study this long enough to play it well. I find it simply too heavy to play. Thanks for the insight.

What a great channel! I could listen to you yak all day! every heard the Hely-Hutchinson Carol Symphony? opens like a cantata with each phrase of "O Come All Ye Faithful" being blasted out by the horns every eight bars or so while al kinds of dazzling counterpoint is going on in between. Marvelous piece! I think old Victor died one winter after getting too cold because he didn't pay his heating bill or something...ironic, really.

Britten, Warlock, Bartok, Messiaen... You've got me hooked!

I suppose this isn't the dominant interpretation of the lyrics but they remind me of Herman Hesse's book, Siddhartha.

I love this channel! I’ve learned so much here. I say, yak on! Merry Christmas

This is a bit out of the blue, but when I first discovered it (I was 15), Bach's organ Pastoral in F, BWV 590, struck me immediately as very "Christmas-y". Ever since then - way back before music went online - I've always had it in my Christmas rotation. Merry Christmas to all, and happy holidays.🎄

No William Tell Overture. I heard it 1000 times, and it still gets me going.

Merry Xmas to you and Loki 🎄🎅🥂

Like the Bethlehem star, your talk shines and is wondrous. Great performances too!

Seasons greetings to you and Loki.

Thanks, Music Professor, your insights are always great for an amateur choral singer. We are rehearsing Taverner's The Lamb now. It was written for 3 year old Simon, who I take to be his son, which somehow makes those unexpected harmonies, dropping in out of nowhere, all the more poignant. Special hi to Ian, you're doing a great job!

Thank you for this, especially reminding me about l’Enfance du Christ. I didn’t know that about how it came to written.

Just to clarify your point about the Nutcracker overture: the first 33 bars are given to the treble instruments only (with the violas as the “bass”) but then the bassoons join in, followed by the two horns after another 35 bars. But you are quite correct that the lower strings (cellos, basses) do bot join in until the first scene.

Lovely selection! Thanks, Matthew! For carols, The Shepherds' Farewell, Bethlehem Down, The Lamb, and Britten's Ceremony are always on my Christmas playlist. Right up there too for me are Herbert Howells' 'Sing Lullaby' and 'A Spotless Rose'. Not to forget some more modern gems: Lauridsen's 'O Magnum Mysterium', Whitacre 'Lux Aurumque', James Macmillan 'O Radiant Dawn' and Will Todd 'My LordHas Come'. Have you written a festive piece? Merry Christmas to you and family!

Merry Christmas! I will listen to Liszt's Christus (The first part) and play the two piano transcription Liszt arranged.

Do you think a few conductors treat the “rest,note,note, note” quaver quadruplet in the first bar as a triplet? Sometimes I hear it like that. Watching conductors I see the rest corresponding to the first quaver beat. He was so innovative in 1808. He has morphed a quadruplet into a modified triplet with a silent beat leading.

I think the most stunning Christmas song except for perhaps "Silent night" which is a kind of lullaby, is Adolph Adam's "Holy Night" - the same Adolph Adam who wrote ballets like" Giselle" and some operas. With the proviso that it be sung by classically trained singers who can cope with that sublime and ineffable high note at the end! I have a digitally engineered recording of the Welsh boy soprano Aled Jones singing a duet of it -of himself as a tenor adult with himself as a boy soprano! The effect is overwhelming especially when he hits that high note towards the end.

Boring yaketty yak? Luckily that person is out to lunch, and here you are, sharing fascinating new-to-me pieces! And Loki looks adorable in his bow tie 😊

Thanks for your videos! Your analysis and passion for music is incredible and I love the manner in which you teach. Happy holidays!

i guess i could make a playlist since you've kindly provided links. not counting Cinderella as Christmas music tho