A Little Suite for Christmas A.D. 1979 (1980)

The Little Suite for Christmas was inspired by Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua and was composed in early 1980 for the pianist Lambert Orkis. Each of its seven movements corresponds either to one of the fresco panels or to some other manifestation of joy at the Nativity.

The first movement, The Visitation, begins with two thematic cells that are to return later in the Suite: one, a solemn chiming of two opposing whole-tone hexachords played simultaneously in slow contrary motion; the other, a jubilant peal of parallel pairs of overlapped major sevenths. These frame a central section suggestive of bird-song.

The Berceuse for the Infant Jesus has to be one of the most sublimely tender moments in all music. For me, it evokes fully, in just nine measures of music, the ineffable love of this mother for her divine Child.

The mysterious rustlings and insect sounds of The Shepherds’ Noël bear a family resemblance to those in Bartók’s various Night-Music movements, while the Adoration of the Magi (a personal favorite of mine), with its monodic opening melody and its punctuating tam-tam tones, invites comparison with its counterpart in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur L’Enfant-Jésus.

The clashing whole-tone sets that opened the Suite are transformed in the aggressively exultant Nativity Dance into a percussive gesture of frenzied exuberance hurtling vehemently toward the principal theme, a series of wild, shawm-like melodic fragments played over a rhythmically mercurial bass.

In the Canticle of the Holy Night, the sixteenth-century English “Coventry Carol” is gently strummed on the piano strings, hovering like the sweet tones of a minstrel’s harp over a backdrop of drowsy nocturnal murmurings.

The Carol of the Bells comprises four distinct bell-motifs heard in alternation: the first, deep in the bass, is tolling and gonglike; the second, dying off earlier at each restatement, is played on fifth-partial harmonics; the third is an almost mechanical carillon in the extreme treble, reminiscent of traditional Russian bell-ringing techniques; and, finally, the fourth marks a reappearance of the pealing sevenths from the first movement.

—Marcantonio Barone