Ho! The Long Christmas Nights, suite of Christmas songs - Otmar Mácha
Otmar Mácha‘s (1922 - 2006) extensive and significant output comprises works of all vocal and instrumental genres. These include, among others, six operas, an oratorio, cantatas, grand symphonic forms, instrumental concertos, and dozens of chamber pieces. Mácha’s music for children is notably numerous, above all in the field of children’s choral music. The score entitled Ho! The Long Christmas Nights (Hej, Vánoce, dlouhý noce) bearing the subtitle Suite of Christmas songs on folk texts for children’s choir, percussions, recorder and strings belongs among the most inspired of the author’s arrangements. Having chosen 17 tunes with the original lyrics of the many Czech and Moravian folk Christmas songs (and in the case of the song “Sleep, Little One” (“Chtíc aby spal”) a popular song with a known author), Mácha arranged them to form a small suite with instrumental intermezzos.
Forming a single continuous flow of music, the composition is marked for its burliness and hearty musicality with appropriate contrasting passages of slower, lyrical pieces on the one hand, and sprightly, joyful songs on the other, topped with the finale in the form of the hymnic Jesus Christ Was Born (Narodil se Kristus Pán). The non-complicated voice setting ranges from unison to four voices including solo voices from the choir. Likewise, the instrumental accompaniment remains appropriately simple, making use of such typical folk-music techniques as ostinato, drones, or fiddler-like ornamentation and timbre modulation of a melody. This suite, written in 1996, was not the first of its kind in Mácha’s output; it was preceded by several other suites: Grant Us, Oh Lord, a Merry Eve (Ó, dej nám, Pane, večer veselý) for children’s choir, wind quintet, and percussions from 1995, or Ten Christmas Carols (Deset vánočních koled) for higher voice, a soprano instrument and piano (a version for female choir is also available) from 1988. The suite Ho! The Long Christmas Nights evokes the joyful and comforting Christmas atmosphere by means of its simple beauty and inartificial grace just like a number of similar compositions by other Czech authors.
Other compositions by Otmar Mácha published in Czech Radio:
Spring sonata, Autumn sonata
instrumentationcoro bamb, perc, fl becc, archidescriptionscorepubl. No.R 205price260,- CZK
Parts only for hire at nakladatelstvi@rozhlas.cz