Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.The Collect for the First Sunday after Christmas Day, 1979 Book of Common Prayer
The Choristers Prayer, said by many choirs, employs a similar turn of phrase:
Bless, O Lord, us thy servants,
who minister in thy temple.
Grant that what we sing with our lips,
we may believe in our hearts,
and what we believe in our hearts,
we may show forth in our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
emphasis added
The Collect for the First Sunday after Christmas Day is the only collect in the 1979 prayer book to include the phrase ”in our hearts”.
In a season so synonymous with music, this connection with musicians is a happy connection indeed.
The Incarnation has been particularly fertile ground for the creation of new music alongside the cherishing of familiar carols and hymns.
Might this be grafted in our hearts as we embark on the rest of the liturgical year laid out before us? That we believe the light of incarnate Word enkindled in our hearts and let it show forth in our lives.
That will give us something to “sing with our lips” indeed.
On this, the last day of the year marking the sesquicentennial of the birth of Gustav Holst, we hear his “Personent hodie”.
This Finnish melody (found in Piae Cantiones, 1582) receives a lively performance here by a Finnish choir in Holst’s effective arrangement for unison voices with organ.
Add it to our list of Five Carols in E minor That You Should Know.
The list so far: Five Carols in E minor That You Should Know
1. God rest you merry, gentlemen - David Willcocks
2. Personent hodie - Gustav Holst
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, Finland, Holst
It occurs to me to ascribe a Christmas narrative to the Pastorale in F, BWV 590 (PDF score) by Johann Sebastian Bach.
As far as we know, Bach did not have an overt Christmas narrative in mind when writing this piece. But for modern audiences, hearing this piece at Christmastime, it is not too much of a stretch to lay out a narrative approach to listening to (and perhaps performing this piece).
Assigning extra-musical content to a non-programmatic piece of music is something organists like to do when they think too much about a single piece of music. I remember Harold Vogel doing this to Sweelinck once. Now it's my turn.
As a starting point, the Pastorale itself, as a musical genre, connects to an idealized lifestyle of shepherds. Even for J. S. Bach, the Pastorale had this connection: the Sinfonia to Part II of Bach's Christmas Oratorio is a Pastorale that "sets the stage" for the tenor recitative of Luke 2:8-9 that follows.
And so, we can safely begin our narrative for Bach Pastorale, BWV 590, with the shepherds here also.
Bach’s Pastorale in F has four movements, none with tempo markings. Bach may have even conceived of the first movement as a standalone work (or simply written it significantly before the successive movements), but the final cadence, in A minor, makes the idea of a single-movement Pastorale difficult. For a short work of only 37 bars, a cadence in an unrelated key strongly suggests one or more additional movements that feed off of this unresolved tension.
Movement 1: Meet the Shepherds
The new key of A Major is the kind of shimmering in the air, or perhaps “disturbance in the Force”, if you will, that the shepherds sense that herald the angel's arrival.
This movement does not return to its starting key; it ends with an A minor chord, the vi chord in our starting key of F Major.
And so it begins. The shepherds we just met are now in the presence of an angel, and they are "sore afraid”.
Movement 2: Fear Not
The second movement focuses on two words from the tenth verse of Luke Chapter 2: “Fear not”.
This gentle, bucolic writing is meant to calm the shepherds’ anxiety at the end of movement one. The A minor finale of the previous movement has its answer in its relative, C Major.
The intimate quality of this movement is best conveyed through performance on a single stop. A solo four-foot stop is not out of place here.
Movement 3: Angel Aria
We then duck into a parallel minor for an aria. Where the previous movement serves to calm the shepherds down, this movement serves to inform them and ultimately spur them to action.
The texture here lends itself to playing on two manuals: a solo voice in the right hand and a softer accompanimental texture in the left.
This aria texture allows the angel to announce, explain, and invite. The content could be that which is found in Luke 2:10-12. The angel’s explanation of the sign that the shepherds will find implies an invitation for them to get up and see for themselves.
Movement 4: Dance Party
After the monologue, this solitary angel is joined by their compatriots, and the music that they employ is a dance that the shepherds understand: a gigue. It is the dance of “Glory to God in the highest” told angelically (a fugue) and in the vernacular of their audience (a gigue). It is a moment when heaven and earth mingle, and the angels’ song takes on particular sonic flesh for the shepherds.
With today’s carol we start building a list of “Five Christmas Carols in E minor That You Should Know”.
Come to think of it, this list could have started with Jaebon Hwang’s “Dormi, Jesu”, but it doesn’t. And so, we press forward into uncharted E minor territory.
If you asked 10 organists to name a Christmas carol in E minor (and believe me, I have), most of them would first name the David Willcocks arrangement of “God rest you merry, gentlemen”.
This carol has everything: a brief introduction of the melody in octaves, confusion about “you” versus “ye”, a gorgeous four-part arrangement of the carol that is deceptively difficult to accompany on the organ, an important and often-misunderstood comma in the first line, an unaccompanied stanza or two, a refrain with a triplet in it, and a three-part descant for SSA.
I can think of nothing more pleasureable to play on the organ that the final stanza of this carol, with its pedal point, melody in the left hand, and the right hand triads. It just feels and sounds like Christmas.
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, Willcocks
On this First Sunday after Christmas, things have kind of a quiet vibe, at least where I am. Not only are choirs and congregations a bit smaller than they were on Christmas Eve, but even the Introit for the day speaks directly of profound quietness.
I’ve written about this special Christmas quietness before: Whenas all the world was in profoundest quietness: Silence at Christmas 27 December 2019
And in this quiet Christmas mood, our carol for today is the Nativity Carol by John Rutter (who we mentioned yesterday, but didn't quite listen to!). One of Rutter’s earliest compositions, the composer also wrote his own text for this one.
Especially as far as Rutter’s Christmas output is concerned, this carol has a special place in my heart. It was a regular part of the Christmas lineup at Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis, when I served as assistant organist there.
This carol was sung at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College this year. It had previously been sung at the made-for-TV service called “Carols from Kings”.
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, John Rutter
I have enjoyed the tender John Rutter treatment of the Christmas lullaby text “Dormi, Jesu” for many years. It has also been on my planning list of possibilities to sing on Christmas Eve for a few years now. I thought 2024 was the year.
But a review in the Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians caught my attention, and I realized that another composer’s setting of these words would fit the bill just as well, if not better.
Jaebon Hwang was commissioned to write “Dormi, Jesu” for the Lessons and Carols Service held in the Memorial Church at Harvard University.
The Latin words for this carol were popularized after their discovery by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. What I particularly enjoy about Hwang’s carol is she fully participates in the macaronic carol tradition by incorporating Coleridge’s English versification alongside the original Latin.
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, Jaebon Hwang, John Rutter
A happy, quiet alternative to the boisterous William Mathias treatment is Gustav Holst’s "A babe is born."
It is especially good, I think, to draw attention to this carol in the waning days of Holst's 150th anniversary year.
From a set of Four Old English Carols (1907), this one, scored for SATB with piano accompaniment, can also be rendered very effectively on harp. Heard this way, it brings to mind Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, written in 1942. One wonders whether Britten considered this old text for that famous suite with harp.
If you're in need of another treatment of "A babe is born", this text also appears elsewhere.
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Britten, Christmas, Holst, Mathias
For today, another setting (like yesterday) of the Dora Greenwell text “If ye would hear the angels sing”.
For all its elegance, the Peter Tranchell setting I shared yesterday doesn't let itself get overly involved in setting the text. This is not so with today’s setting by St. Louis composer Martha Shaffer.
Shaffer’s brilliant setting helped me to actually pay attention to the words of this carol for the first time this year. She gives a masterful SSAATTBB rendering of a Dutch tune found in the Oxford Book of Carols. And, keeping it in the family, so to speak, her arrangement is also published by Oxford.
Listen here to a recording made by the St. Louis Chamber Chorus (almost undoubtedly with Martha Shaffer in the recording booth):
Particularly exuberant, in Shaffer’s hands, is the evangelical thrust of the final two stanzas:
If ye would hear the angels sing, Christians! See ye let each door Stand wider than it e’er stood before, On Christmas Day in the morning. Rise, and open wide the door; Christians, rise! The world is wide, And many there be that stand outside, Yet Christmas comes in the morning.
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, Martha Shaffer
I wish I could begin the 12 days of Christmas with Peter Tranchell’s deliciously weird “People, look East” which is strange and unsettling in all the right ways. But its fully an Advent piece, and that season ended yesterday afternoon, didn’t it?
But why not stay with Tranchell for his splendid “If ye would hear the angels sing” for today.
In hunting for a recording, I noticed that the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, has sung this in different keys to suit various soloists. I find this recording captures the innate elegance of this carol:
This carol has had two hearings at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's in 2008 (as the invitatory carol) and 2010 (after the second lesson).
Labels: 12 Carols for Christmas, Christmas, Peter Tranchell
Over on the All Things Rite and Musical podcast (hey, remember that thing?) I've recorded a 10-minute preview of the music for this year's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge.
Spoiler alert: the service starts starts with "Once in royal David's city".
It's an audio-only product for now, but I'll probably write a bit more about the service here in the next little while.
(I really did not intend to take a full-year sabbatical from All Things Rite, but that's what happened! Sorry, Ian!)
Labels: Christmas, King's College (Cambridge), Lessons and Carols
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