Please Pass the Music

A small Thanksgiving playlist for anyone trying to feel grateful.

It’s Thanksgiving next week and, for reasons I never quite saw coming, it has become a major part of my work life. Recipes, catering, pumpkin pies, more pumpkin pies, and the stress levels of anyone cooking for twelve. At first it felt odd, because it’s such an American holiday and I live in London, but with a big American community here and a global audience, it has become completely normal. Some of my American friends say Thanksgiving is bigger than Christmas, which still surprises me.

The whole idea of Thanksgiving is a bit foreign to me, but I’ve now been to enough dinners to understand the appeal. One tradition I keep seeing, and I’m still not convinced it is an actual tradition, is going around the table saying what you’re grateful for. My sarcastic side has produced some questionable answers over the years, but I’ve always admired the people who manage real sincerity.

This year, though, it feels harder. I know how lucky I am and I don’t take any of it for granted. I have my health, a home, a job, friends, and a life many people I’m sure would love to have. But with everything happening in the world, the division, the pain, the sheer overwhelm, gratitude doesn’t land as easily as it usually does.

So I turn back to music. I wasn’t expecting to find much that screams “Thanksgiving” in the classical world, because I’m not sure there is such a thing, but there are pieces that sit in the zone of gratitude and gathering. Music that feels grounded and communal without trying to make a grand point. Here are a few of them.

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Ombra mai fu from Serse by G. F. Handel

This aria is one of Handel’s most recognisable moments, but the set-up is a bit odd. Ombra mai fu opens his opera Serse (or Xerxes, depending on who you ask) and features the King of Persia singing a heartfelt thank you to a tree. Even in opera world, where people happily sing for several minutes about a single idea, this one stands out. The tree has given him shade, yes, but is it really worth an entire aria? The London audience in 1738 didn’t think so. The opera ran for only five performances before disappearing.

The reason wasn’t just the tree. Handel mixed a serious royal plot with comic scenes, and audiences at the time wanted their genres neatly separated. Serious was serious, funny was funny, and the idea of a romantic comedy wasn’t quite something they were ready for. So Serse vanished for almost two centuries and only returned to the stage in 1924. Since then it has found a much more appreciative audience.

One thing that probably helped modern listeners is the structure. Handel usually wrote da capo arias, which means a clear A section, then a B section, then a return to the A section with ornaments added by the singer. In Serse, he largely avoids that pattern. The arias move forward instead of looping back, which keeps the whole opera feeling lighter and more flowing. Considering eighteenth century operas often went on for hours and audiences brought food and drink with them, this one must have felt almost streamlined.

And a small detail I only learned this year. Serse is the same person as Ahasuerus, or Ahashverosh, from the Book of Esther. The one read every Purim. He is far from noble in that story, so it is slightly surreal to realise Handel’s king and the biblical king are the same man.

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Cantique de Jean Racine - Gabriel Fauré

Thanksgiving has a lot to do with gathering and the feeling of people coming together, so it felt wrong not to include at least one choral piece. If you’ve ever sung in a choir, you’ll know what I mean. There’s something about standing in a room with other voices, each singing something different but fitting together, that is unlike anything else. People talk about flow state when performing. For me, after years of school choirs and youth choirs, it’s still one of my comfort places.

Fauré wrote Cantique de Jean Racine when he was 19. He was studying at the École Niedermeyer in Paris and Saint Saens, who taught there from time to time, pushed him towards composing. Not a bad mentor to have. Fauré entered this piece for the school competition and won first prize, which makes sense when you hear it.

A quick word on the title, mainly because I realised recently that although I’ve known this piece for years, I’d never thought about what it actually meant. A cantique is simply a hymn. Jean Racine was one of the great French dramatists, right up there with Molière. His text here is a French paraphrase of a Latin hymn, and Fauré set it because the French felt clearer and more direct than the original.

The piece itself is incredibly comforting. Part of it comes from the steady pulse. Nothing rushes and nothing derails. It just moves forward with this calm, assured pace and absolutely no shock moments. The other part is the way the vocal lines wrap around each other. The harmony feels soft and warm, and the whole thing has that very French sheen to it. It feels like the musical version of settling into a room where everyone already knows how to listen to each other.

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5th movement from Symphony no. 6 ‘Pastoral’ - Ludwig van Beethoven

People often say they love instrumental music because there are no words, which means no one tells you what to think. You get to decide what the music means. It’s abstract, it’s yours. With vocal music you’ve got the text, which is beautiful, but it does come with a bit of a frame built in.

Then Beethoven shows up with his 6th Symphony and basically says, here is the frame. He titles every movement. The first is Arrival in the countryside, the second is Scene by the brook, the 3rd is Merry gathering of country folk, the 4th is Thunder and storm, and the 5th, the one for today, is Shepherd’s song. Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm.

Beethoven even wrote that the symphony was ‘more an expression of feeling than painting a story’, but the movement titles still give you a strong sense of what he had in mind. It’s not vague. He wanted a shepherd’s song of gratitude, so that’s what you get.

And it does make a difference. Conductors spend half their lives trying to decide how to shape a piece, and here Beethoven basically leaves a note saying: this is the vibe. You can still interpret it, but you’re not pretending the storm is actually a gentle drizzle and the ending is secretly about despair. It’s literally a musical thank you after a rough patch.

The recording I keep returning to is Riccardo Muti with the Philadelphia Orchestra. They lean into the warmth and the relief, and it feels like the musical version of looking around after chaos and realising everything is intact after all.

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Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copland

It felt wrong to write a Thanksgiving newsletter without at least one American composer, and you don’t get much more ‘American-sounding’ than Copland. Appalachian Spring is one of those pieces that seems to sit in the collective memory even if you’ve never knowingly listened to it. Open harmonies, that huge sense of space, a kind of calm optimism. It’s the musical version of wide skies.

It started life as a ballet score. In 1942 the patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned a new work for Martha Graham, who was already a giant in the dance world, and Copland was asked to write the music. So in a roundabout way the whole thing began as a gift for Graham, which feels fitting for a piece that’s become so tied to ideas of community and renewal.

The title is another twist. Copland didn’t come up with it. He finished the music before it had a name, and Graham later borrowed ‘Appalachian Spring’ from a Hart Crane poem simply because she liked the sound of it. The piece isn’t about the Appalachians and it isn’t about spring either, but the title stuck and now no one can imagine it being called anything else.

Keep an ear out for the Shaker tune ‘Simple Gifts’ tucked into the score. Copland drops it in with zero fuss, as if to say, here, have something familiar. It’s one of those moments that feels effortless, almost casual, and it adds to the sense of ease the piece has when it finally settles down.

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O blonde Cérès from Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz

This one might seem a little left-field in the mix, but it makes sense to me. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it. I must have been in my late teens, watching Les Troyens on TV one Saturday evening. That was my idea of a big night in as a teenager. I remember the production, John Eliot Gardiner on the podium, and I’m fairly sure it was the Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu singing Iopas. I remember sitting there thinking, this sounds strangely close to my own voice and I think I could sing it. A few years later I did, in a couple of auditions, and it led to a few concerts, so it has stayed with me ever since.

The opera itself is huge. Berlioz spent years writing it, and the scale is ridiculous in the best way. It tells the story of the fall of Troy and the escape to Carthage, with the whole Aeneas and Dido saga in the middle. You get prophecies, ghosts, battles, and enough drama to fill several operas, yet tucked inside all of that is this small, calm moment.

The aria comes from the banquet scene in Carthage. Iopas steps forward and sings a gentle hymn to Ceres, the goddess of grain and harvest. It is basically a thank-you song for fields growing back and for the return of abundance. In the middle of Berlioz’s gigantic opera, this little aria suddenly appears and just glows for a minute. No turmoil, no fire, no doom. Just a singer offering thanks.

It is short, it is simple, and it feels like someone raising a glass and saying, here’s to good food and calmer days. That is why it earns its spot here.

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Good luck with your week, whatever form it takes. If the cooking gets stressful, put one of these on and step away from the oven.

Have a good weekend and happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! x