I almost forgot to write about the Czech Christmas Mass this year.
It's not actually a mass, it's a 'Missa Pastoralis', whatever that means, but what it ultimately is is a Czech folk oratorio recounting the birth of Christ.
Just as all Christian cultures recount the crucifixion in the Passion Play, so too do many Christian cultures have Nativity Plays, which is particularly common in the Czech lands - at least according to three seconds on wikipedia...
Ryba was five years older than Beethoven, nine younger than Mozart, and wrote the piece in 1796, that weird musical twilight between Mozart's death and Beethoven's deafness. And while there is plenty of evidence in this piece that Ryba knew The Magic Flute backwards and forwards, there is a folk coloring in this music that cannot be explained by any music yet written down. There is absolutely no Bartered Bride without this piece, and one can easily picture the various characters having a beer with other archetypal Czechs like Schweik or the Hrma family. One does not hear these kind of folk rhythms again until Smetana and Dvorak, or at very least Liszt, and occasionally you can hear the 20th-century composers of Central Europe peaking through...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCHzz8M3oTc
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