This week, Music for a While is dedicated to Thanksgiving. I had never done a Thanksgiving podcast — a music podcast about, or for, Thanksgiving. Lots of Christmas podcasts. And Fourth of July podcasts. An Easter podcast or two. Halloween podcasts. But Thanksgiving? Is there enough music? Yes, if you stretch things a bit.
Does “Bless This House” qualify as Thanksgiving music? Well, it is “adjacent,” to use a currently popular word.
I have songs by Richard Strauss and Irving Berlin. Irving Berlin? Yes. His big hit from Holiday Inn, the 1942 movie, was “White Christmas.” But that movie also boasted “I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For.” I have a couple of songs about turkeys — one by Chabrier, the other by a jokey American of uncertain identity.
There is also the paradigmatic Thanksgiving song, or hymn: “We Gather Together” (which originated in Holland at the end of the 16th century).
At the end of this podcast, I say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest thing ever written, pretty much.” I am speaking of the slow movement of a Beethoven string quartet (Op. 132). His subheading: “Holy song of thanksgiving from a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian mode.”
Again, this ’cast is here. Happy Thanksgiving to all.