A Christmas Choral Spectacular (arr. Peter Breiner) (Classic Christmas)
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A Christmas Choral Spectacular
(arrangements by Peter Breiner)
A staple of the Christian choral tradition, the carol is most
accurately defined as a religious seasonal song, of joyful
character, in the vernacular and sung by the common
people, and indeed the time-hallowed annual Christmas
ritual of carolling, always close to the hearts of ordinary
people, is essentially of peasant rather than aristocratic
origin. Several of the most enduring carol-tunes date from
the Middle Ages or even earlier, having first been either
sacred or secular, particularly pastoral melodies,
frequently of French or German origin. The latter group
often have lilting rhythms, betraying their former links
with courtly dancing, not infrequently out of doors, and
some of these are as pagan in origin as our Christmas holly
or the candles on our cake. Others may relate more
specifically to, or have been at least in part inspired by the
crib that from the time of St Francis of Assisi in the
thirteenth century has traditionally been installed in
churches at Christmastide.
The medieval carol, which as often dealt with earthly
topics as with the Nativity, the Blessed Virgin or St
Nicolas, usually favoured a Latin or vernacular text
arranged in simple, easily memorised stanzas with
repeatable refrains, or 'burdens'. While many ancient
carol-tunes are extant in manuscript, the earliest printed
carols, in the collection of Caxton's pupil Wynkyn de
Worde, first appeared in England in 1521. After the
Reformation carols inclined in their message and mood of
Christmas toward a more modern idiom. In 1833 William
Sandys' seminal Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern
appeared and the Victorian era saw the publication of
other influential collections, including Bramley and
Stainer's Christmas Carols New and Old and by the late
nineteenth-century revival movements, analogous to those
relating to folk-song and dance, were active in preserving
ancient oral carol traditions from extinction. The trend
continued into the twentieth century through various
choral anthologies.
Another, sadly now all but faded strand in the fabric
of choral Christmas, is the nostalgic English custom of
open-air carol-singing, performed by 'waits'. This, as
Percy Scholes reminds us, 'had long become a matter of
door-to-door visitation, often of a very picturesque nature
[which] tended to be degraded into a petty beggary: in
every district little children paraded from door-step to
door-step, from the end of November onwards, building
up a Christmas fund by the extortion of what may very
fairly be called "hush money".'
The distinctive lilt of Ding dong! Merrily on high,
with its now familiar English text by G.R. Woodward
(1848-1934), betrays its history, for it was originally not a
carol at all but a courtly dance-rhythm. Attributed to the
pseudonymous Thoinot Arbeau (1520-1595) it was
gleaned from the Orchesographie of 1589, a manual of
music and choreography by the French ecclesiastic Jehan
Tabourot.
The Coventry Carol, Lully, lulla, thow little tyne
child, deals with the slaughter of the Holy Innocents by
Herod and is drawn from the Pageant of the Shearman and
Taylors, one of the cycle of medieval mystery plays
performed annually around the streets of Coventry on
Corpus Christi, included in the edition by Robert Croo
(1534). The song, one of only two surviving vernacular
songs from English mystery plays, was added to Croo's
manuscript by Thomas Mawdycke in 1591 and it is this
tune which has come down to us, by way of a bowdlerised
version preserved in Thomas Sharp's 1825 Dissertations
on the Coventry pageants.
A rhythmic tune in the Welsh tradition of penillion, in
which singers improvise on a melody from the harpist,
Deck the hall was originally a carol for dancing rather than
a Festive one. As Nos Galan (New Year's Eve) it
appeared in Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh
Bards (1784), by the Merionethshire-born harpist and
folk-song collector Edward Jones (1752-1824). Its
original Welsh verses were subsequently translated as
Soon the hoar old year will leave us, while the now
familiar Deck the hall version apparently originated in J.P.
McCaskey's Franklin Square Song Collection of 1881.
In mid-European and Teutonic pagan traditions the
fir-tree was a token of the life-force surviving winter's
frost long before it symbolized renewal at the birth of
Christ, and the Christmas-tree later became synonymous
with Martin Luther who, many Germans formerly
believed, was the first to use it in the context of the
Nativity. In the 1820s, by which time Christmas-trees had
assumed a domestic connotation in Germany, it acquired
words drawn from a sixteenth-century song, now with a
popular tune known, at least, by 1799, with the words Es
lebe hoch, the carpenter's song. The student song
beginning Lauriger Horatius quam dixisti verum used the
same melody. The result was the well-known O Christmas
Tree (O Tannenbaum).
Variously rendered in its original as Oi Betleem! and
Oh, mi Belen, the traditional Basque The Infant King was
first transcribed by Bordes in 1895. Its English words were
added soon afterwards by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-
1924), the noted folk-song collector, editor and
hymnodist, who was also sometime squire and rector of
the Devonshire parish of Lewtrenchard. It has undergone
various subsequent arrangements.
The origins of O come, all ye faithful, the most
famous of all Christmas carols, are obscure, but both the
Latin text Adeste, fidele and the tune, which most
probably date from the eighteenth century, exist in a
manuscript of circa 1740 by the English Catholic teacher
and music scribe John Francis Wade (c.1711-1786), of the
English College at Douai. In 1910 it was suggested that
the first part of the melody was an adaptation of an
operatic aria by Handel, but more recent scholarship has
attributed it to Wade's friend Thomas Arne (1710-1778).
Whereas the carol was popular in its Latin original in the
United States from about 1795, the now widely known
English version was the work of the mid-Victorian
hymnodists F. Oakeley, F.H. Murray and W.T. Brooke.
The words of O little town of Bethlehem, an American
carol, by Bishop Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) of Holy
Trinity Church, Philadelphia, were reputedly inspired by
his trip to Jerusalem in 1865. It was first set to music by
his organist, Lewis Redner, in 1868 and since then it has
occupied a special niche in the carol repertory. It has
retained its popularity in various arrangements. The text
was also famously set by Ralph Vaughan Williams and
subtitled Forest Green, based on the old English tune The
Ploughboy's Dream.
The text of Puer nobis nascitur, rector angelorum
(Unto us is born a son, the ruler of angels) is that of a
fifteenth-century German carol, an offertory of thanks to
God. One of the finest of medieval cantiones (songs) the
tune was also heard in France, in the form of a Latin noël,
from the sixteenth century onwards.
With original music, in the folk-song mode, by the
Austrian Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863) and words by
Josef Mohr (1792-1848), Silent Night, Holy Night (Stille
Nacht, heilige Nacht), one of the best loved of carols, is
now known in English-speaking countries in a translation
dating from the 1870s by John F. Young (1820-1885).
Supposedly written at short notice for a midnight Mass at
Oberndorf parish church on Christmas Eve, 1818, it was
later popularised in Germany by Tyrolean singers and by
the 1840s several variants of the original had found their
way into print. The carol's earliest printed English version,
Holy Night! Peaceful Night!, by Jane Montgomery
Campbell (London, 1863) was introduced to the United
States in the early 1870s by the Episcopalian hymnodist
Charles Lewis Hutchins.
Probably the best known of traditional Czech carols,
Hajej, nynej, JeÏi%ku (Little Jesus, sweetly sleep) first
gained currency in the English-speaking world through
The Oxford Book of Carols. A lullaby with which all
Czechs are familiar, its undulating rhythm harks back to
the medieval German custom of cradle rocking.
Gloucester Wassail (Wassail, wassail, all over the
town!) is a carol with traditional English text and melody,
based on an eighteenth-century Gloucestershire wassailing
song. This found new currency in Victorian times in
Husk's Songs of the Nativity (1864) and in an arrangement
by Sir John Stainer (1840-1901).
Quem pastores laudavere (Him whom the shepherds
praised) is a paean of praise to the Infant Christ the King.
This fourteenth-century German carol was later included
in both Catholic and Lutheran usage. Adapted by the
Thuringian hymnodist and editor Michael Praetorius
(1571-1621), it first appeared in print in his Musae Sioniae
of 1607.
Although it has become a firm world favourite among
Christmas songs, the calypso-style adaptation of a
traditional Trinidadian carol, The Virgin Mary had a baby
boy, is a comparative newcomer to the English repertoire.
Included by the West Indian baritone and collector Edric
Connor in his 1945 Collection of West Indian Spirituals
and Folk Tunes, it was, he claimed, handed down to him
by a 94-year-old plantation worker, in Trinidad in 1943.
Peter Dempsey
Ding Dong! Merrily on High (more info)
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Ding Dong! Merrily on High - 02:46
Coventry Carol (more info)
-
Coventry Carol - 04:50
Deck the Hall (more info)
-
Deck the Hall - 03:17
O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum) (more info)
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O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum) - 05:06
The Infant King (Oh, mi Belen) (more info)
-
The Infant King (Oh, mi Belen) - 04:25
O come, all ye faithful (Adeste, fideles) (more info)
-
O come, all ye faithful (Adeste, fideles) - 05:46
O Little Town of Bethlehem (more info)
-
O Little Town of Bethlehem - 05:51
Puer nobis nascitur (more info)
-
Puer nobis nascitur - 07:25
Silent Night (Stille Nacht) (more info)
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Silent Night (Stille Nacht) - 06:44
Little Jesus, Sweetly Sleep (more info)
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Little Jesus, Sweetly Sleep - 04:18
Gloucester Wassail (more info)
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Gloucester Wassail - 04:39
Quem pastores laudavere (more info)
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Quem pastores laudavere - 05:30
The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy (more info)
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The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy - 03:42