A Watch to Hear

August 9
In 1865, Charles Reuge, watchmaker from the Val-de-Travers, settled in Sainte-Croix and began making pocket watches with musical movements. Today, Reuge has a reputation for manufacturing the most luxurious seasonal and non-seasonal music boxes around the world. But all was not sweet. The invention of the phonograph record in the early 20th century nearly wiped out the music box industry completely. Reuge survived, largely due to their quality sound and accurate movements -- and they still make musical pocket watches.

He Played For Scale

May 7

Though he accepted the commission from Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Tchaikovsky did not particularly want to write the Nutcracker Suite. He wrote to a friend while composing the ballet: "I am daily becoming more and more attuned to my task.” While composing the music for the ballet, Tchaikovsky is said to have argued with a friend who wagered that the composer could not write a melody based on the notes of the octave in sequence. Tchaikovsky asked if it mattered whether the notes were in ascending or descending order and was assured it did not. This resulted in the grand adagio from the grand pas de deux of the second act.

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840

Parang

April 19

You might not think of Christmas carols when visiting Trinidad or Tobago, but from October to January, singers go from house to house singing Parang, a song style identified with these tropical Caribbean islands. Similar in intent to Christmas caroling, Parang bands, or "Parenderos," consist of about five singers and musicians who play guitar, mandolin, violin, cello, clapper, claves, tiple, guiro, and maracas.

The Tooth about Santa

April 9

Perhaps one of the strangest Christmas songs to become popular was written by Donald Gardner in 1944. A schoolteacher in Smithtown, New York, he asked the class what they all wanted for Christmas. Since most of them were of the age where baby teeth begin to fall out, he noticed that nearly all the kids answered him in a lisp. So he wrote "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth"... and the rest is history.