A friend mentioned in a group chat that her husband had begun humming the tune of Mel Tormé's "The Christmas Song" ('Chestnuts roasting...'), but their obviously very well-raised daughter heard something different. The friend sketched out these two tunes - elegantly notated in alto clef - to illustrate:
If you don't know the second example, it is an unlikely connection for sure - the bracing brass beginning to the finale of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. This is such glorious, life-affirming music, you should probably just listen to the whole thing now:
But of course, I love nothing more than finding these unexpected portals between two wildly dissimilar musical entities. Maybe because I was jealous that I hadn't discovered this one, I immediately started thinking of other seasonal ways to connect Bartók's concerto to Christmas. It didn't take long until the opening oboe tune from the fourth movement came to mind; its second little sub-phrase ends with three short repeated notes which, with my brain in yuletide searching mode, I quickly associated with Jingle Bells.
The rest is just a matter of piecing things together, a process I always find creatively satisfying. Although such silliness might on the surface seem disrespectful of the original, I almost always find that this kind of engagement makes me enjoy and appreciate the original more. As I've said many times, this is merely another way of "playing" or "playing with" familiar and iconic music. As it happens, Bartók's fourth movement is intended to be humorous and lighthearted, so I don't think this interruption is so far from its spirit.
It was also fun to set up the score so that Bartók's mixed meters are mixed with a steady 2/4 for the jingling bells. And though I will surely include this mini-mashup in my MM Christmas playlist, it's worth noting that Jingle Bells is not really Christmas-specific at all, so the fact that this is arriving after December 25 need not mean it is ill-timed. Winter has a long way to go yet. Happy New Year from MMmusing!
To be clear, the first "page" there is simply what Bartók wrote (rendered by computer), while the second page adds "Jingle Bells" via piccolo, glockenspiel, and bassoon to the original.
P.S. Although this is "fresh" material from my virtual desk drawer, it definitely fits the spirit of my ongoing "Emptying the Desk Drawer" series of multimedia mischief which is permanently archived via that link.
P.P.S. The story of my friend's daughter mishearing a hummed tune reminds me of a story I told early in this post about my own daughter skillfully switching from one tune to another VERY different permutation of the same melodic structure.
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