Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Usually in a Major Key
December 10, 2012 6:16 AM   Subscribe

What makes Christmas music sound like Christmas music?

Is there something inherent in the musical structure of Christmas songs? That is to say, if you take away the holiday lyrics and the bell sounds, is there anything else about the melodies and chord structures that makes these songs sound Christmasy?
posted by HeroZero to Media & Arts (25 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nostalgia.
posted by headnsouth at 6:21 AM on December 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


The christmas songs which everyone remembers are mainly the simple, easy-to-learn ones that almost anyone can pick up.

Consequently, most popular christmas songs feature the most common chord-sequence or a variant of it - "4-5-1" (for example, in the key of C major, this would be using the chords F major, G major and C).

Over the top of this would be a super-simple melody - think "Jingle Bells", the melody uses almost entirely the notes of the chord, with very little in between. That makes it really hard to get it wrong as they're the notes your brain most expects to accompany those chords.

Nursery rhymes are similar - simple and therefore memorable. For carols, add bells :)
posted by greenish at 6:36 AM on December 10, 2012


Schmaltz.

Seriously though, there is an element of nostalgia. Sure, some a re simple, but the fact that they are sung each year at the same time sets them apart. Many (mostly older hymns) are quite complex, but still fall into the christmas playbook.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:37 AM on December 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


I think you may have cart before horse here. I'm not so sure there is anything inherantly "Christmasy" about a lot of the music you hear at Christmas - it's the other way around, that this is music you hear at Christmas, so this music now translates in your brain as "Christmasy". If the only time you ever heard dubstep was around Christmas, dubstep would sound "Christmasy" to you.

However, headnsouth has a good point - there are some songs that we always and forever only listen to around Christmas time; the bulk of those songs are either 40's-50's pop standards, or are medieval carols. The reason why carols got popular is because they get used as hymns in church during the Christmas season, and have been used as hymns for a very long time. After 500-1000+ years of having the same songs get brought out for the same holiday each year, they're gonna stick, even though the rest of the world has moved on to another type of music. So those medieval-y songs get revived every year.

As for the more "pop" things - a lot of those 40's and 50's songs were first broadcast back when people first had radios for the first time. Radio, as a technology, didn't really get widely distributed until the 30's and 40's - people were writing Christmas music before, but the 40's was the first time any kind of song really had a mass market. And the 40's and 50's was the childhood for the biggest demographic generation right now; a generation that starts feeling nostalgic every Christmas and wanting to bring back the songs they heard all the time when they were kids. So thus, we get "Silver Bells" and "White Christmas" and all those other holiday standards that are in a 1940's/1950's songstyle over and over and over.

And we, who grew up as their kids, also have come to associate those songs from the 40's and 50's with "Christmas" because we also heard it over and over and over. However, we also have been hearing other songs now and then - because everyone tries their hands at a "Christmas" song. Not all of them have as much sticking power, but not every song of any kind has as much sticking power. A couple seem to be sticking out, though - John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)", Wham's "Last Christmas", Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You", Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis", and The Pogue's "Fairytale Of New York" all seem to have legs, and Band-Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" has been getting a kind of iconic status as well (if only because people love doing Bono imitations for that one line he sings).

"Joy To The World", "Silver Bells," and "All I Want For Christmas Is You" could sound any less alike, but they all sound "Christmasy" to you - because they all only get played on Christmas.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:42 AM on December 10, 2012 [7 favorites]


Assuming you're talking more about classic Christmas carols than some rock group's attempt to cash in on the holiday: okay, 'nostalgia' is a good term for it.

A lot of the classic carols are based on the same melodies and use the same instruments as the music many of us grew up with in church, so right off the bat we're sort of 'conditioned' to accept them as special: not the everyday stuff on the radio. Plus we hear those carols *only* in the context of the holiday season: again, that conditions us to accept them as special. Add in the lyrics and play 'em over and over and over, and you've got it.

Then you get junk like Madonna's remake of 'Santa Baby', which I can't listen to without wanting to drive an icepick through my eardrums...... I'd rather sit through a hundred straight runs of 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer'!
posted by easily confused at 6:43 AM on December 10, 2012


I seriously doubt it. On preview: Being made from the I, 1V and V chords, and having tunes that are easy to sing, hardly distinguishes Christmas music.
posted by thelonius at 6:43 AM on December 10, 2012


Bells are heavily used. Oh sorry, "if you take away the bells"...well, simple melodies are common (like the same four notes being repeated over and over)
posted by Eicats at 6:44 AM on December 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Anything sung by a boys' choir -- the Meow Mix theme song, for example, or Baby Got Back -- will sound like Christmas music to me.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 7:05 AM on December 10, 2012


Best answer: The first comment about 1-IV-V chords is right. Also ii-V. It's not just that these chords are used. The progression moves along slowly, methodically, predictably, with little variation throughout the song. Yes, many songs of different genres are fairly simple, but Christmas songs are especially simple, and that's what makes them sound childlike. If you want to make music that sounds like doo-woop, you'll use not just I-IV-V, but also vi. Doo-wop is still simple, but that one extra minor chord is enough to change the mood from "Christmas" to "love song." If you want to make rock music, you'll use I-IV-V in a major key but you'll also borrow chords from the parallel minor like VII, VI, III. Or you might just write in a minor key. If you want to make Christmas music, you'll avoid those more subtle chords, and you'll almost always write in a major key.

Christmas songs are more likely to start out by going from I directly to V than other genres. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Winter Wonderland," "Blue Christmas." It's a Classical (as in Mozart) approach to chords with non-classical accompaniment. Or if they start with I-IV, they'll still go to I-V soon after that, as if to make sure the chord progression is as "proper" as can be, e.g. "Frosty the Snowman," "Jingle Bells."

There are plenty of Christmas songs with more harmonic complexity in the form of key changes. This is usually a dramatic departure from the key, going into a "bridge" section. But the chords stay simple within each key. (For instance, "Winter Wonderland," "Sleigh Bells," "Frosty the Snowman.")

Also, if you think about the first line of famous Christmas songs, I'll bet you could find elements in common with the melodies. They're like to start with a strong interval, then they delicately trace a part of scale with a clear sense of direction. For instance, "Oh the weather [leaping up a whole octave] outside is frightful [descending scale and then back down to the original note]." "Jingle bells, jingle bells [same note], jingle [big leap up] all the way, oh... [ascending scale]."

The melodies will carefully trace the notes of the accompanying chords with a very dainty, proper feel. Sure, most genres involve melodies that follow chords — that's not the point. The point is, if you were writing a rock song, you would probably want the melody to deviate from the chords at some points. In Christmas music, the composer carefully avoids dissonance.

There's a lot that could be said about the accompiment. For instance, you're likely to hear an upright bass playing a simple figure like I-V for each chord (so, for instance, it would play C-G-C-G over a C major chord). Again, is that unique to Christmas music? No, Christmas music isn't the most original genre. You don't define a genre by pointing to elements that aren't found in any other music. When you take a bunch of elements that are familiar from lots of genres, but combine them in a recognizable way, then you have a genre.
posted by John Cohen at 7:36 AM on December 10, 2012 [11 favorites]


I think you have it backwards. Christmas music is all in the arrangement and lyrics, not the underlying structure. Throw jingle bells into any song and it will start to sound Christmas-y, like "Kiss Me On The Bus" by the Replacements. Change the words to "Wonderful Christmastime" and all you have is a peppy poppy Paul McCartney tune. If it still sounds Christmas-y at all it's because you already associate the melody with Christmas, as many above have already stated.
posted by Devoidoid at 7:55 AM on December 10, 2012


An non-Christian friend who mostly grew up in not-culturally-Christian countries before coming to the US mentioned to me a couple years ago that she loved Lady Gaga's new Christmas song, and pointed me to it. She was talking about Teeth. There is nothing Christmasy about Teeth; as far as I can tell it's about sex and vampires. So I asked why on earth she thought it was a Christmas song. "Because it has jingle bells!" she said.

So I think we may artificially associate some "Christmasy" elements with songs, and that there's no art or science to actually making a song A Christmas Song other than writing the appropriate lyrics.
posted by olinerd at 8:03 AM on December 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Change the words to "Wonderful Christmastime" and all you have is a peppy poppy Paul McCartney tune.

Paul McCartney is actually distinguished from a lot of other rock composers in that he did write melodies that carefully trace the chords in the very proper, Christmas-y way I've described. John Lennon and Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix didn't write like that. Still, most of McCartney's chord progressions have more variety and surprise than the average Christmas song.

And no, I don't have it backwards, it's just that some people are expecting the impossible: a list of elements that are found in Christmas music and are never found in any other genre. If that's your standard, then you can't possibly define any genre of music! Every genre has some elements in common with other genres.
posted by John Cohen at 8:04 AM on December 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Best answer: The term "carol" comes from the medieval French "carole" meaning a "circle dance". The dancers would join hands in a circle and then dance to a call and response song (they also sung the response as they danced). So, in theory we could say "Christmas music bears some resemblance to the music used in a carole" - the problem is that neither music nor lyrics survive - only the carols we have today which are descendants of this extinct form. However the modern "rondeau" dance which can be found in nothern France is, apparently, a relative. Here is an example.

So you could attribute some of the sound of a carol to the tempo and structure of a song which will work as a call and response circle dance.
posted by rongorongo at 8:19 AM on December 10, 2012


or are medieval carols. The reason why carols got popular is because they get used as hymns in church during the Christmas season, and have been used as hymns for a very long time. After 500-1000+ years of having the same songs get brought out for the same holiday each year, they're gonna stick

Actually, most of the 'traditional' Christmas carols have really only been around as such about 100 years. A lot of the older tunes (Ding dong, merrily on high, God rest ye merry gentlemen, Good King Wenceslas and countless more) were only put to Christmas words relatively recently. I'm putting together an order of service at the moment that includes composer and author dates, and it's very heavy on late 19th & early 20th century. Some are older - 'O come all ye faithful', although the well-known form is a Victorian arrangement. 'While shepherds watched' is usually sung to a tune that, while not originally a Christmas carol, is about the same age as the words.

Before this time, carols were more localised - go to the next town (or even the next village) and they sang a completely different version of the words to a different tune. It carries on in the pubs of the peak district, but there's more than a bit of tourist trap about it now.

The growth of hymnals and separate carol books meant that people had, for the first time, to decide which tunes to sing carols to. One of the first was the Cowley Carol Book in 1901. The second volume (1919) is responsible for a lot of the carols still used in England.
posted by monkey closet at 8:21 AM on December 10, 2012


Anything sung by a boys' choir -- the Meow Mix theme song, for example, or Baby Got Back -- will sound like Christmas music to me.

Choirs in general lend a Christmassy feel. Takes it back to the choirs-of-angels genre of church music.
posted by Doohickie at 8:46 AM on December 10, 2012


Best answer: This answer is going to be slightly off the mark, but Christmas (or holiday) detection in music audio was actually a research focus of mine for a brief period in grad school. The idea was to take common machine listening techniques and figure out if a computer could detect if a song was christmas-y or not based purely on the audio signal (so, not looking for the title having Jingle in it or snow on the cover.) I didn't think it would work, and it didn't, sort of "proving" to me that there's nothing innate in the signal that separates holiday music from non-holiday. However, it's a stupid experiment, since I was biased by the toolkit of filters and machine learning needed to make the prediction.

I ended up turning the experiment into an album of the reverse process -- the computer taking the model and making christmas music from it. If you listen to those songs and hear christmas, well, then maybe there is something predictable in the composition or timbre. And hilariously, 8 years later, my company did release an automated christmas detector, but it uses metadata and context alone, no audio. As far as I know, no one in the field has cracked the "christmas detection" chestnut (sorry.)
posted by brianwhitman at 9:39 AM on December 10, 2012 [4 favorites]


Best answer: This is something I've thought about a fair bit, being a songwriter and having written a Christmas song of my own a few years back.

wikipedia has a list of the most-performed Christmas songs in the USA, compiled by ASCAP during the years 2000-2005. There are several things we can note about the songs on this list.

As noted above, most of these songs were written in the first half of the 20th century, and so many of their musical characteristics are those of the American popular music of that period. The original recordings of the older songs tend to feature solo vocalists accompanied by lush orchestral instrumentation, as was the style at the time. There are a lot of other generalizations we can make about the arrangements and the vocal styles, but most of that just falls under the umbrella of "early 20th-century American popular song." I would note though that you hear a lot of bass/baritone male voices in these older songs, as opposed to the higher-pitched vocals that became more popular in the rock era and later, probably because they're better at cutting through noisy guitars and drums.

When rock 'n' roll came around in the '50s and '60s, you started seeing Christmas songs with bluesy electric guitars and drum kits, sometimes overtly flagging themselves as part of that trend, like with "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Jingle Bell Rock."

In terms of structure, these songs tend to have a lot in common. Although this still isn't something that's unique to Christmas songs, I think it does help to define the genre, such as it is: They are overwhelmingly written in a "verse-bridge" structure, which was more common in older popular music, rather than a "verse-refrain" structure, which (along with more intricate variations) is more common in modern pop.

In the former, the musical and lyrical "hook" of the song (which is often the title) is contained in the verse -- in these songs, it's more often than not the very first line of the song. If the hook isn't the first line of the verse, it's usually the last. The verse will be followed by a bridge, which is designed to provide contrast with the verse, often leading slightly away from the home key, before setting up a return to the verse and home key by the end of the section. By way of example, some Beatles songs with verse-bridge structures are: Hey Jude, We Can Work It Out, and A Hard Day's Night.

In the verse-refrain structure, the musical and lyrical hook is contained in the refrain, or chorus, of the song, which follows the verse, the purpose of which is to set up the chorus. A few Beatles songs with a verse-refrain structure are Let It Be, Obla-Di Obla-Da, and With A Little Help From My Friends.

The verse-bridge structure has the effect of sort of front-loading a song, identifying it to listeners with the hook/title, and signifying that it's a Christmas song, right off the bat. It's a very "listener-friendly" form.

In terms of the older songs -- Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Silent Night, Joy to the World, O Christmas Tree, etc. -- you see both the features of common practice classical music, with diatonic melodies, functional harmony, and melismatic passages, and the modal qualities of traditional folk tunes, e.g. the dorian and aeolian modes in What Child is This and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, respectively.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:52 AM on December 10, 2012


And just to drive the point about structure home a little more, I'd also point out that one of the few Christmas songs on that list whose original title was not the first line of the song commonly has its title changed to fit that format: "The Christmas Song" (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).
posted by ludwig_van at 10:02 AM on December 10, 2012


The growth of hymnals and separate carol books meant that people had, for the first time, to decide which tunes to sing carols to. One of the first was the Cowley Carol Book in 1901. The second volume (1919) is responsible for a lot of the carols still used in England.

I think you're on the right track, but St. Francis and John Awdlay were codifying Christmas carols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries! Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen and the Coventry Carol are 400+ years old.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 10:43 AM on December 10, 2012


Ludwig_van:

In terms of structure, these songs tend to have a lot in common. Although this still isn't something that's unique to Christmas songs, I think it does help to define the genre, such as it is: They are overwhelmingly written in a "verse-bridge" structure, which was more common in older popular music, rather than a "verse-refrain" structure, which (along with more intricate variations) is more common in modern pop.

This is kind of what I was getting at with my note about "their characteristics reflect the time in which they were written, rather than being about 'Christmas'." A very different kind of structure exists for "Christmas in Hollis" - but it's a very common structure for Hip-Hop. So I'm still leaning towards the "no structure inherantly says 'Christmas,' what makes a song "Christmasy" is the subject and the time in which it's played".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:10 AM on December 10, 2012


And no, I don't have it backwards,

John Cohen, I was referring to HeroZero's question, not your answer. I apologize for any misunderstanding or offense.
posted by Devoidoid at 11:24 AM on December 10, 2012


Best answer: En route to an answer I am going to mention bells of the jingling type; sorry!

"Jingle Bells" was penned by James Pierpont in 1857. He grew up in New England and knew all about getting around by sleigh during the winter - the sleigh in the song is, of course, 'one horse' and 'open' - but the last verse contains quite a few technicalities relating to sound and tempo:
Now the ground is white
Go it while you're young,
Take the girls tonight
and sing this sleighing song;
Just get a bobtailed bay
Two forty as his speed
Hitch him to an open sleigh
And crack! you'll take the lead.

According to the Wikipedia article on the song "Two forty refers to a mile in two minutes and forty seconds at the trot, or 22.5 miles per hour." The bells on the horses bobbed tail are there to warn passers by to get out of the way - and the trot gives us our tempo. Here are some one horse open sleighs in operation to give you an idea of that sound. In a nineteenth century New England winter the land was full of people spending hour upon hour sitting behind a trotting horse and, perhaps, making up such songs.

I mention all this only to say point out that "Sleigh Ride", "Rudolf" and dozens of other Christmas songs are derived from this very specific experience via "Jingle Bells" which got there first. And if you take away the bells, as you wish, you are left with the sound and pace of a brisk trot to act as the template for your candidate Christmas song.
posted by rongorongo at 2:03 PM on December 10, 2012


^^ Working link to the sleigh
posted by rongorongo at 2:28 PM on December 10, 2012


By the way, one thing that doesn't make much sense it to say that Christmas songs can't be defined in music-theory terms because it's actually just a cultural association. Of course there's a cultural association, but that begs the question of what's associated with what, and why. For instance, major keys are associated with cheerfulness. The simplicity in many of the elements of Christmas music makes it appeal to children. Another typical feature is moderate tempos (not too fast, not too slow), which are pleasant for all ages. While the most common Christmas chords (I-IV-V) are also found in many Green Day songs, there are good reasons why you're unlikely to confuse Christmas music with Green Day. Green Day's songs are faster, and they often repeat I-V-IV over and over again, without ever resolving through a V-I cadence. Christmas music is more slow and methodical in walking through the chords and making sure to pass through V on the way back to I; this makes it palatable to all ages, in a way that punk rock isn't.
posted by John Cohen at 8:08 PM on December 10, 2012


one thing that doesn't make much sense it to say that Christmas songs can't be defined in music-theory terms because it's actually just a cultural association. Of course there's a cultural association, but that begs the question of what's associated with what, and why. For instance, major keys are associated with cheerfulness. The simplicity in many of the elements of Christmas music makes it appeal to children. Another typical feature is moderate tempos (not too fast, not too slow), which are pleasant for all ages.

Well, yes, but there are also cheerful, simple, and moderate-tempo NON-Christmas songs. And, there are Christmas songs in minor keys (and Carol Of The Bells is both in a minor key and at a faster-than-moderate tempo).

Music theory can explain how certain music techniques evoke particular emotions or "hummability", but I question whether music theory can explain how certain music techniques evoke something as specific as "Christmas".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:42 AM on December 11, 2012


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