So – this is Christmas Day. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

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Great Tidings I hope to bring – my name is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for me to get writing up on the blog all about this year’s especially Festive track – because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write to you about a different piece of music every day! That includes Christmas Day – otherwise you wouldn’t be reading these words right now – would you? I really wanted to do something unique and special for this year’s Christmas Day post, and so we’re going to turn to some classical music to bring some light into a Christmas that’s unusual for us. An idea that may or may not have been suggested by my own mother – I’ll leave that one for you to get worked out. In any case, Angela Morley’s “Snow Ride” is a recording which began life as a Classical music composition for film directors and television producers to use for their suitable backgrounds of an icy winter’s journey, before it was originally lost in 1964 due to the Chappell fire. Although it’s sadly unclear when this composition was first recorded, originally, the track was later digitally restored from it’s original recording by the code of Morley’s webpages. It seems to be cleverly reconstructed – and the fascinating thing about Morley is that she was the first openly Transgender person to be nominated for an Academy Award, back in 1976. Morley has also scored works like ‘Watership Down’, ‘The Little Prince’ and ‘The Slipper and The Rose’. Sadly, we lost Morley in 2009, at the age of 84, due to some complications from a heart attack. Her memory lives on from hits with the likes of Dame Shirley Bassey, Robert Farnon and Scott Walker – and my research into her career tells me that she would have been a familiar household name with the BBC in the 50’s. Let’s check out “Snow Ride” below.

The work of “Snow Ride”, by the English – and later Arizona-based classical music composer – was included on Naxos’ compilation album of seasonal classical music entitled “Another Night Before Christmas”, and you can also catch it on the John Wilson Orchestra’s album comprised of reworkings of Angela Morley’s work entitled “The Film & Television Music Of Angela Morley”, which was released in 2009 – as a celebration of her life – via the Vocalion record label. Obviously, there are no singing vocals at all to be analysed here – but the orchestral String sections and the wide-eyed crescendo of Cello melodies mixed with sweeping Horn patterns manage to evoke a very nostalgic and cheerful range of emotions – The childhood excitement of waking up to a tree full of presents and the delightfully frozen, Arctic environments of a Scandinavian winter springs to mind for me. The instrumentation is catchy and melodic, with a jovial sense of percussion blending with a comforting and Traditional range of Brass instrumentation. The pacing is actually quite stop-and-start and push-and-pull – if you read between the lines here – as a sparse Woodwind melody creeps into the frame at the mid-way mark – only to be teased instead – and pushed aside by the main repetition of the theme of the Violin arrangements. It leads to polished Sleigh bell melodies and even an Xylophone beat supplying layers to the theatrical, swooping chorus of climactic, grand String melodies. Most of these instruments convey an exotic expression – but they never really enter the soundscape thereafter. Although the melodies are quickly paced, the laidback moods of each of these phases, if you will, within the track imply to me that there is no particular hurry to the winter’s journey taking place in the narrative framework – but the aim seems to be a fun, exciting time in the cold air. A warm mix of familiarity and powerful layers is the key and although it’s not something that I’d usually go out of my way to seek out – I enjoyed it – as the traditional sounds give me a warm feeling of pure winter joy inside.

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Thank you for taking the time out of your Christmas Day to read my special post. Join me again for Boxing Day tomorrow – as we clear up our trilogy of unique and different seasonal posts with another large stylistic change. Instead of Hip-Hop or Classical music – We’re looking at a fun novelty track from one of the internet’s original favourites. Some of his most famous works have spooked or parodied the likes of Madonna, Michael Jackson, The Rolling Stones, Lady GaGa, Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Backstreet Boys, Coolio, and many more. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/