Archives for December 19, 2006

– Bethlehem Down (Peter Warlock, recorded by the King’s Singers). Poor Peter Warlock, who put out the cat and turned on the gas at the end of a turbulent, too-short life, left behind a goodly number of modern Christmas carols, of which the modally flavored “Bethlehem Down,” written in 1927, is the most frequently performed and (in my opinion) the prettiest. This performance is part of an unusually wide-ranging program of carols that also includes an exquisitely sung version of Praetorius’s “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” which might just be my all-time favorite traditional carol.

– Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Tchaikovsky-Shavers, recorded by the John Kirby Sextet). I have a sweet tooth for jazzed-up classics from the swing era, and this riffy, dapper version of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” charms my socks right off.

– A Ceremony of Carols (Benjamin Britten, recorded by Osian Ellis, Sir David Willcocks, and the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge). If you’ve never heard it, order this CD right now.

– The Christmas Song (Mel Torm

The other night I walked into the lobby of an off-Broadway theater and ran into a woman who said to me, “Are you Terry Teachout?” I reluctantly admitted that I was. “There’s something I’ve got to know,” she said. “Where’s Smalltown?”

Of course it’s no secret, or at least not much of one. Among other things, I’ve strewn my postings from Smalltown, U.S.A., with innumerable clues to the identity of the place where I grew up, and whose name I suppress not out of the urge to conceal but in the hope that doing so will make it easier for readers who come from similarly small towns of their own to identify with my memories of the one that I still think of as my home. It pleases me to write about Smalltown as if it were Anytown, or Everytown, but if you really want to know where it is, all you have to do is ask.

Should you ask me tomorrow, your answer will come via e-mail from the place itself. I’m hitting the road first thing Wednesday morning to spend eight happy days in the bosom of my family. I expect I’ll be posting a lot less during that time (at least until my sniffles dry up), though I don’t plan to shut down altogether. In any case, I have clothes to fold and presents to buy, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my chores.

See you around.

“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Manners”