Know the score

Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker score isn’t the only one that has become popular outside of its original context.

Many TV and film soundtracks and scores have taken their rightful place in the Christmas-music canon, alongside the traditional carols, the modern pop hits and the new covers of traditional carols.

Here are five that have become synonymous with the season.

Johnny Marks, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

The iconic (and much parodied) Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation special is based on Marks’ own 1949 Christmas standard, which in turn is based on a 1939 story written by his brother-in-law, Robert L. May. So, it makes sense that Marks would provide all the other songs on the soundtrack.

But the title track is not the star of this show. No, that’s Burl Ives’ rollicking rendition of A Holly Jolly Christmas, performed as narrator Sam the Snowman, which is likely more closely associated with the special than its actual namesake.

Vince Guaraldi Trio, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

A little backstory: in the early 1960s, television producer Lee Mendelson originally commissioned American jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi to do the music for A Boy Named Charlie Brown, a documentary about Charles M. Schulz’s popular Peanuts comic strip.

That doc never aired, but its theme song, Linus and Lucy, became a staple of the beloved 1965 Christmas special and, eventually, the theme for the entire Peanuts franchise.

Guaraldi had a real knack for capturing the comic-strip energy of Schulz’s hand-drawn creations in music. Skating, for example, sounds exactly like being out on the ice, with its long glides and sparkling twirls. But the instrumental version of Christmastime is Here, with its twinge of melancholy, is the Charlie Browniest of the bunch.

Howard Blake, The Snowman (1982)

Based on Raymond Briggs’ 1978 picture book of the same name, this Academy Award-nominated animated short — about an English boy who builds a snowman who comes to life and flies him to the North Pole — is pretty much all score, performed by the Sinfonia of London.

Blake’s soaring Walking in the Air is the central theme, with a lyrical version performed by Peter Auty, then a St Paul’s Cathedral choirboy. It is, strikingly, in A-minor, which gives it an added emotional resonance.

John Williams, Home Alone (1990)

Composed and conducted by one of the greatest living film composers and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony, the Academy Award-nominated score to director Chris Columbus’s classic holiday comedy is the right blend of mischievous and magical, and seamlessly weaves in standards such as Carol of the Bells to dramatic effect.

But it’s the song Somewhere in My Memory that has endured as a holiday playlist staple. The version with lyrics is a little schmaltzy, but one can’t help but get that gingerbread feeling from that almost wistful choir refrain: “All of the music/all of the magic/all of the family/home here with me.”

Danny Elfman, Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Elfman’s score for The Nightmare Before Christmas often makes it onto roundups like this, but one can make a compelling, Die Hard-esque argument that Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands is, indeed, a Christmas movie.

The pivotal scene, where the neighbourhood turns on Edward (Johnny Depp) and sends him back into exile, takes place at Christmastime. He is carving an ice sculpture of an angel, and his love interest Kim (Winona Ryder) is twirling in the blizzard he’s creating when he accidentally slices her hand open.

This is the first time we hear Ice Dance, a breathtaking work that makes gorgeous use of a particularly haunting choir. And since all roads lead back to Nutcracker, it’s long been this writer’s pet theory that Ice Dance was perhaps influenced by Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Snowflakes. The closest confirmation is this quote:

“I don’t know what made me want to use children’s voices other than telling the story and telling the fairy tale,” Elfman told Vulture in 2015.

“I think that probably opened the door to Tchaikovsky and using a choir in that way, I’m sure. But it’s all very unconscious.”

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