And in the 20th century, the celesta began to appear on Top 40 charts. It has been woven into songs by Kate Bush and Björk, Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd. Perhaps most famously, it quaintly opens Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” and joyously bobs, not unlike the Sugar Plum Fairy’s dance, at the start of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
Truest to Tchaikovsky’s treatment of the celesta in “The Nutcracker,” as a vehicle for fantasy, has been the instrument’s appearance in film soundtracks. In the 1971 musical “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” a celesta hypnotically sparkles as Wonka sings “Pure Imagination,” introducing visitors to the chocolate river and candy-coated landscape of his factory.
In the 21st century, the celesta may be most closely associated with a work of fantasy that rivals “The Nutcracker” in popularity: the Harry Potter films. The first three were scored by John Williams, the reigning composer of symphonic movie soundtracks, with an encyclopedic and reverential sense of how classical music can shape franchises like “Jaws,” “Star Wars” and “Home Alone.”
The film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” opens with the defining musical motif of the series, a celesta melody called “Hedwig’s Theme.” You could describe this tune with the same language you would use for “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”: toylike in its fun and transporting in its allure. Above all, it is magical.
Instruments have a way of quickly conjuring moods and images, and that’s largely because of how they’ve been used in the past. The English horn is nostalgic; the French horn, noble. And if “Hedwig’s Theme” immediately brings the world of magic to mind, that association was planted by Tchaikovsky well over a century ago in “The Nutcracker.”
Audio credits: Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy” (Philips); Jean Rondeau, “J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, Variation I” (Erato); Igor Levit, “Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 29, ‘Hammerklavier,’ I: Allegro” (Sony); Ensemble Musica Nigella, “La Tempête: Chant d’Ariel”(Klarthe); Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Claudio Abbado, “Tchaikovsky: The Voyevoda” (Sony); Munich Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann, “Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier” (Decca); New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein, “Gershwin: An American in Paris” (Sony); Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan, “Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” (Deutsche Grammophon); Buddy Holly, “Everyday” (UMG); Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (UMG); Gene Wilder, “Pure Imagination” (Interscope); John Williams, “Hedwig’s Theme” (Warner).