Requiems are not your usual fare when its comes to holiday music.

One usually turns to brighter, more uplifting music. Something like, say, Handel's "Messiah" or J.S. Bach's "Christmas Oratorio," or brassy Baroque works by Gabrieli or traditional carols.

And yet last weekend's performances at the UW-Madison of Karol Szymanowski's darkly moody "Stabat Mater" and especially Mozart's poignant Requiem felt right for the season. They helped set up a heart-felt and very non-materialist, alternative mood for the holidays. One left those works, and those performances of them, awed by beauty and pensive about life.

What explains how deeply they struck me? (I wasn't the only one since only six empty seats of 750 remained at Friday night's sold-out performance. And surprisingly, almost half a house showed up on Saturday night during the treacherous ice and snowstorm.)

Part of the appeal certainly was the first-rate quality of the performances by the UW Choral Union (in which my wife sings) and the UW Chamber Orchestra, which all performed tightly under the baton of conductor Beverly Taylor (pictured at above left). Both the Friday and Saturday performances were outstanding, though I tend to favor the Saturday one a bit more.

Perhaps that is simply because the ensembles had one additional performance under its belt. Or perhaps it was because Taylor's reading seemed more subtle. She seemed to let up just a bit on the aggressive tempi and the loud brass - though I disdain music box Mozart and really love more assertive Mozart - and let shine through better those lyrical, transparent and heartbreakingly redemptive phrases that only Mozart could write.

But no matter the specifics, the singing and instrumental playing were terrific, the dynamics were subtle and the balances well defined in both performances. The composers, the performers and the public were all well served.

Yet I think the deeper appeal has do with something more than the quality of the performance, which, however superb it was or is, should never outshine the quality of the music itself.

Christmas, and even Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and other holidays including New Year's, are not just about the birth of a divine child or light or a harvest.

They are about the human condition.

Even in Handel's "Messiah," human mortality is acknowledged in the dark chorus "As in Adam, All Die." It's the famed "Hallelujah" chorus most of us remember and love to sing, but the basis of all those hallelujahs is, in fact, the victory - real or metaphorical - over death.

For me, and I suspect for many of the performers and audience members last weekend, beautiful music is just a victory. 

Without such acknowledgement of the facts of life - including the fact of death - the larger point or purpose of Christmas, and eventually Easter, along with all sorts of other religious practices and holidays, would be lost.

I admit it, it's a radical idea, but perhaps we could rejuvenate some enthusiasm for holiday traditions by inventing some new ones: maybe annual performances of Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (with the "Ode to Joy") or the Brahms "German" Requiem would be fine additions.

Why do you think the Mozart Requiem so appealed to people this time of the year?

What do you think is the best classical holiday music to listen to and perform?

What other music could be used for new holiday traditions?

Let Art talk and its readers know specific works to seek out.