Ladies and Gentlemen, we are back. We hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving and are looking forward to an equally merry Christmas.
And now, can you guess what our lucky winner, for this season's song is? 
  "CATalunia!" 
No, do not applaud. My dear audience, we are sorry to say that there was a sorry lack of interest in our poll, so much so that our music expert (switched now to 'music lover') is one tiny bit discouraged. However, we hope to see more activity in future. For now, we did get a winner and we shall philosophize on that.

  Unfortuantely, for all the digging our music lover did, she could only come up with a little bit about this piece. But that is simply because there isn't much to tell.
  CATalunia, a French peice by the name of "Duetto Buffo di Due Gatti" (Humorous Duet for Two Cats) is often attributed to French composer Gioachino Rossini. However, it was most likely written as a compilation in 1825 which draws principally off of Rossini's 1816 opera, "Otello".  The compiler is thought to be Robert Lucas de Pearsall, who in this case adopted the pseudonym, G. Berthold.
 The piece is generally sung as an encore by two sopranos, though it has been done by a Soprano with either a Tenor or  a Bass.

  So there you have it. For your laughing benefit, we will share the song one more time with you , just in case you didn't listen to it in the first post, (Though if you did, it doesn't hurt to hear it again!) and please, we welcome, no we beg for your feedback.
And now, my dear readers, I really would like your feedback on this blog of mine, as this coming year, I would like to implement some changes, so please leave a comment about the following.
  What would you like to see more of on this blog?

• Posts about my life
• About composers
• Popular music issures
• Hymn Writers
• Old hymns
• Music Hystory 
• Anything else I haven't thought of but you have!

I have also been contemplating doing giveaways; if I did, I'd be interested in knowing how many of you would participate!
  So the stage is yours, dear readers, what would you be interested in?

Christmas is Coming and the goose is getting fat...coming up next will be my annual twelve days of Christmas posts; stay tuned!

   Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen. Tonight I wish to present to you our annual song contest which began as of today. In this exciting competition, several pieces of music will vie for championship and you, my lovely readers, will be the judges. The music selected for tonight comes from various songs Miss Christianna E. Hellwig, our music expert (Right?), has heard, and enjoyed or been amused by over the course of this year. After having listened to each song at your leisure, you will comment and vote for the song you liked the best. The winning entry will be spliced and diced by our music expert in her next post; meaning you will learn everything you ever wanted to know, or didn't, about said piece of music. Does that sound fair?

    However, being that this is a musical event, before we announce our music finalists for this year's competition, you must allow yourself to be regaled by a musical interlude.
  It is Autumn, my fair audience, is it not? And therefore, allow me to present to you, "Autumn" from the four seasons written by the eminent baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi. An interesting fact to note about this piece is that our music expert, Miss Hellwig, played this piece for her last violin recital. Unfortunately, I am sorry to relate, it ended rather disastrously so we will not present her rendition here.
  Now of course, good people, I am trusting that being the case that you are all human beings living in the twenty-first century, you have all heard the four seasons at some point in your life. To have not heard them yet is a travesty not to be born by any civilized English speaking individual. Therefore if this is the case, though I dearly hope not, haste thee to the concert hall or, ahem, youtube, and look them up immediately, no questions asked. Of course, you may be partially redeemed by listening to the aformentioned season which I am sharing with you now.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. If you're interested in such details, you might like to hear that the soloist was Julia Fischer, and she played with the "Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields."

  But, on to the contest; we have four songs for your consideration; are you ready? Please don't cheer too loudly, after all, you do want to hear each song's entrance, that is a very important part!

  Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our finalists; in no particular order, we have:

   Finiculi, Finicula!
     A Napoleonic song written for a tenor. This version is by Mario Lanza whose rendition our music expert actually prefers to that by Luciano Pavarotti, which is quite unusual.

  Next, please welcome, Here is Love!

  A beautiful welsh hymn. Do beware of the images on this particular video, fair ladies!

   Thirdly, a song from a movie track which has become quite famous;
      The Theme from Schindler's List!

                                     
This particularly moving piece was written by John Williams and performed by Itzhak Perlman, Miss Hellwig's favorite violinist.


Finally, my friends, for something more upbeat, CATalunia!

 Though this song does not have an extensive vocabulary, it may make you double over for an extensive amount of time as it did our music expert.


 And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the choice is yours. Please leave your votes in the comment box, and stand by until the results are announced.

  Until then, good people, we bid you a fond adieu.