The last two months of the year seem crowded with festivities. In the US, Thanksgiving, the harvest festival, is simultaneously the start of the giving holiday season. American composer Paul Reale took indicative melodies for each holiday and used them to create our different feelings for each movement of Holiday Suite, he uses a familiar tune associated with each holiday: We Gather Together for Thanksgiving, In Dulci Jubilo for Christmas, and the old Scotch favourite, Auld Lang Syne for New Years.

Paul Reale (b. 1943)

Each song has a text that reflects its particular role in the day. We Gather Together looks around the assembled company and gives thanks for the achievements of the year. It was originally written in 1597 in The Netherlands to celebrate the Dutch victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Turnhout.

Jan Leuken: The Battle of Turnhout of 1597, 1681 (Amsterdams Historisch Museum)

The Spanish were retreating to winter quarters in Herentals but were caught en route and routed by the English and Dutch cavalry. It led to the bankruptcy of Spain (its third one), monies to pay the soldiers wasn’t available, and mutinies increased. It’s estimated that 2,250 Spanish soldiers were casualties in the battle, whereas the Dutch / English side had only 50 casualties, with 10 dead.

The original Dutch hymnist, Adrianus Valerius, used a Dutch folk tune for his melody, and the song first appeared in print in a 1626 collection of Dutch songs. It came to the American hymnal in 1903 via the Dutch immigrants to the US and, since the 1930s, has become associated with the American Thanksgiving celebrations.

Paul Reale: Holiday Suite – I. Thanksgiving (Jessica Mathaes, violin; Colette Valentine, piano)

The song used for the Christmas movement tells the story of the angels telling the news of the birth of Christ. It is thought to have originated in Germany at the hand of the German mystic Heinrich Seuse after he had a vision of a singing angel who urged them to join their celestial dance, leaving his sorrows and worries behind. The melody may have come from before the 13th century and was first joined in print with the words in a 1533 Lutheran hymnal.

Giovanni di Paolo: Five Dancing Angels, 1430s (Condé Museum)

Reale’s setting simplifies the rhythms and makes a singing melody, alternating with pizzicato sections. Each phrase of the melody is decorated as though for dancing by the celestials. A bit of Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, comes up in the music, as is appropriate for the day.

Paul Reale: Holiday Suite – II. Christmas (Jessica Mathaes, violin; Colette Valentine, piano)

The final melody, Auld Lang Syne, to a text by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, is a look back at the old year, saying farewell at the stroke of midnight as the new year makes its entrance. The poem was written in 1788 to a Scottish folk song. In 1799, it was reset to the pentatonic melody we know today which has become the standard.

When Burns sent a copy of the song to the Scots Musical Museum in 1788, he said that it was ‘an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man’. Comparison with another ‘collected’ song from another poet shows their similarities, but outside the first verse and chorus, the rest of Burns’ poem seems to be by the poet himself. Although we tend to sing this song now in a slow and melancholy manner, the original pentatonic melody was probably much spritelier, intended to be a dance and not recalling a memory.

Reale starts his final movement with a jazz introduction that bows in the direction of Dave Brubeck. With the jazz reference, the light-hearted look back, and the tempo, we can dance into the new year.

Alexander Naysmith: Robert Burns, 1787 (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

Bringing together our different visions of the closing of the year: appreciation for the good that surrounds us, acknowledgement of how the angels brought the news of Christ to the world, and, finally, an appreciation of the year that has past, Paul Reale’s Holiday Suite combines the many different holiday feelings in his three movements.

For more of the best in classical music, sign up for our E-Newsletter