Monthly Archives: December 2010

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Advent Calendar Day 25 – O Come All Ye Faithful / Hark the Herald Angels Sing / The Three Kings

I thought about finishing this on Christmas Eve, but really, the whole point of Advent is that it leads up to Christmas.

Anyway, as I will be busily singing descants at midnight tonight, I’m writing this early, and as you see, I really am insane enough to come home afterward and post it as close to midnight as possible (Merry Christmas!!), rather than going to bed like a sensible person.

It would probably be more in the spirit of this calendar to choose something obscure and early modern or baroque for this, my last Advent Calendar window. I can’t do it. Christmas Day for me is O Come All Ye Faithful, with that glorious descant and the Yay! Lord We Greet Thee (I know, I just couldn’t help myself) in unison with the organ doing insane things beneath it. And Hark, The Herald Angels Sing has the most beautiful descant in the world, and that’s one I won’t get to sing tonight (we’re doing a different, more insane descant, and it’s a lot of fun, but Christmas is also about Tradition, and I like the traditional one).

So that’s what you’re getting.

But you’re getting one more carol, too, because three gifts is also traditional, even if I can’t claim to be a wise woman, let alone a wise man.

(a fact which I am demonstrating at this very moment, in fact. Why am I adding things to this post at 2 in the morning when I’m so tired I had an out of body experience at Midnight Mass? We will never know. Go to bed, Catherine.)

And there is one carol that I have been eyeing off for years and I’ve never sung it or heard it performed before tonight. Well, I have sung it, but sight-reading the solo in a shopping center with three other people trying to fill in the eight part chorale underneath doesn’t really count (though it was fun, in a train-wrecky sort of way. See above note about my lack of wisdom). It’s by Peter Cornelius, and it’s called the Three Kings, which means it is really for Epiphany, but there is *no way* I am continuing out to the Twelve Days of Christmas at this point, so you will just have to listen to it now. Or listen to it now and then, if you like. I certainly won’t stop you.

It’s a beautiful piece of work – the choir does a chorale of ‘How Brightly Shines the Morning Star’, while the soloist sings about the three kings coming to Bethlehem. I’ve always suspected it would sound gorgeous if done well, and it really, really does.

I hope you love it as much as I do. And I hope you enjoy the glorious descants.

Merry Christmas, if that’s what you celebrate, and whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope your day is just as you would wish it to be.

Much love,

Catherine

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5rMQ6P12WY&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hRq3vy7I-4&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2dNKv48WJQ&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 24 – Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day (Trad.)

Very nearly at the end of this Advent journey, and I’ve been saving this one because the words deserve to be heard the day before Christmas.

(…though now that I’ve looked up the song on Wikipedia, I find that there are significantly more words than I was aware of. Yet another medieval carol that gets all the way to Easter before it stops, apparently. Given the cheery cheery nature of the tune, I can’t help suspecting that the Judas and crucifixion verses would sound more than a little odd.)

Anyway. This is a song I have sung in many different arrangements. I’ve always loved the tune and the words – it’s just basically a nice, pretty piece of music.

But oh, the arrangements.

I’ve sung one arrangement that I really liked (with the Wesley choir a few years ago), one I didn’t mind (with the Wesley choir this year), and then there is the other arrangement. A few weeks ago, I promised you the song with the Orgasmic Alto Line – well, this is it. This arrangement has caused more carollers to start giggling and losing it than that line in Jingle Bells about ‘take the girls tonight’, or even the charming juxtaposition of ‘This did Herod sore affray and grievously bewilder / so he gave the word to slay and slew the little childer’ with ‘Of his love and mercy mild, this the Christmas story’, in another carol (Unto us is born a son) that someone really ought to have thought about before they abridged it.

But I digress. Because this is a really lovely carol, I’m presenting it in two arrangements – one I haven’t sung, but which I quite like (though it is a little slow, and I’m sad I couldn’t find that particularly good arrangement from a year or two ago), and yes, the Orgasmic Alto (and tenor and bass) arrangement, sung by King’s College Choir, who are doing a fine job of acting as though they’ve never heard of dubious scoring (as the actress said to the bishop).

I was about to say that when one isn’t being extremely immature about this arrangement, it’s actually very good, but then I listened to it again and reluctantly acknowledge that I for one can’t be anything but extremely immature about it. Though it is gorgeous once you get past that first appalling chorus.

(oh God, it comes back in the last verse! I’d forgotten that… possibly because we never got that far without losing it)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWwcC_dXA6M&w=560&h=315]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Yod6A403s&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 23 – I sing of a maiden (Joachim Knoph)

Today’s carol is going to surprise anyone who is familiar with my usual tastes in music. The composer is actually younger than I am and this piece of music may even have been composed in the current millennium, which makes it a good 400 years newer than the majority of this playlist. It’s actually the kind of music that I really don’t like singing, because it has odd, atonal harmonies and it’s hard to know where it will go next, and if you are an alto, you are probably singing G most of the time.

But it’s a very pretty setting of this carol for all that, and it makes me realise how even classical music goes in cycles – while it definitely has a 20th / 21st century feel, there is something medieval in the harmonics; they have that starkness that comes from open fourths and fifths, and there are bits of plainchant-inspired unison. Even the dissonances feel archaic rather than supermodern.

And, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I do like Mary songs best when they are sung by female voices. It feels more fitting, and I think they sound better.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qad5qfgG26g&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 22 – Magnificat Quarti Toni (Cristobál de Morales)

There’s no hiding the fact that these commentaries get shorter as I get tireder… and I’m getting very tired indeed.

This is another piece of music I’ve never sung, and another composer whom I don’t know. I can’t actually remember the strange pathways and byways that led me to either the composer or the work, but it captures what I think of as the late Advent mood – something about this music makes me think of going to church late at night on Christmas Eve for midnight mass – there’s a feeling of prayerful reflection and pensiveness, but also one of anticipation in this, at least for me. I think it comes in part from the music but also in part from its quiet delivery by this choir.

Cristobál de Morales was apparently a Spanish composer in the first half of the 16th century. Which surprises me, actually, because this piece feels to me as though it owes a lot to Gregorian chant – it certainly starts there, though it gets more polyphonic and brighter as it goes. And I do like the voices in this recording, too. Despite not knowing the piece, it seems to me that they are singing it exactly as it should be sung.

(I do have to confess, however, that I have an uneasy suspicion that this may not actually be Advent music. You see, I can tell the beginning is the Magnificat, but I am not entirely convinced that it is still the Magnificat seven minutes later, let alone once you get to the other section. It’s possible that Morales goes psalming off in a different direction, and I can’t find any lyrics in Latin or English to prove anything convincingly either way…)

Edited in December 2017: When I first wrote this post, it was for a recording of Cristobál de Morales’ Magnificat Tertii Toni.  It turns out that de Morales wrote 18 different settings of the Magnificat, and the one I listened to then is no longer on YouTube, or indeed online, in any version that I could find.  So I went with another of his Magnificats instead, this one sung by Ensemble Plus Ultra and Schola Antiqua, and also very lovely.  The Gregorian bits are sung by an ensemble of unnaturally tuneful priests (in fifteen years of singing at Catholic churches I have heard many priests singing, and none of them sounded remotely like this.  Though you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Kyrie Eleison sung in a broad Aussie accent – Kirri-yay Elayeezon…), and there are more of them than in the Magnificat Tertii Toni.  All my other comments still apply – I have absolutely no idea if they are singing just the Magnificat or other things too, and I’m a little inclined to think the latter, because there just aren’t THAT many lines in the Magnificat…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEFoifOe-jw&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 21 – O Come, O Come Emmanuel

Tonight’s carol is not the one I originally planned. I was tossing up between some Mendelssohn or some Orlando de Lassus, but getting home from choir practice tonight I was so tired that I just couldn’t face listening to lush harmonies or polyphony. Which is really strange, actually – I had no idea that I could find certain kinds of music – my favourite kinds, even – exhausting to listen to. And I definitely couldn’t cope with new melodies, either. I’ve never had this weirdly over-sensitive reaction to tiredness before, and it’s something I’ll have to ponder sometime when I’m less tired.

So I went looking for Gregorian chant in general and O Come O Come Emmanuel in particular.

And I couldn’t find it.

That is, I found O Come O Come Emmanuel in a variety of languages and voicings and arrangements, but they were all far too lush, far too over-instrumented, far too harmonic (actually, there was one arrangement that I would have absolutely adored in another mood, but all that elaborate harmony and polyphony was just too much right now). And the solo versions were not right, either. And apparently all-female versions were right out, or at least, the ones I listened to were.

Basically, I wanted the sound of monks practicing their evensong chant as I heard it once with my friend Anna at a monastery by a volcanic lake in Germany, and apparently I can’t have that no matter how tired I am right now.

But this arrangement is close. The first verse, at least, has the sound I want, and the unison I want, and the pictures are so beautiful they reconcile me to the harmony, which is not *too* overwhelming even in my current state, except sometimes in the chorus. I think I’ll like this even more after a good night’s sleep.

I hope you like it now.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTRgaakVcy0&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 20 – Remember, O Thou Man (Ravenscroft)

Today’s carol is the first piece of music I ever sang with the Wesley Choir, and today must be pretty close to the (? 8th) anniversary of that carol service, since it would have been the Sunday before Christmas. I don’t think we’ve sung it since, which is a pity, if only because Soprano S would have a field day with the lyrics.

We’re back in the genre of medieval carols that hark back to the Garden of Eden and have lyrics that I find more amusing than I should. My personal favourite line in this is the bit which goes ‘And I did what I can, therefore repent.’ There’s a certain note of ‘look, you guys, I’ve done my part, now you’ve got to step up and keep your end of the bargain’ that I find rather appealing.

It’s astonishingly hard to find a good recording of this. I don’t understand why, because it’s a fairly simple piece of music, but perhaps the slightly puritanical lyrics put people off. The recording with good voices tend to have crying babies and medieval costumes (the latter are admittedly rather cool; the former not so much), or else they start midway through the first bar – or they miss the first verse entirely! Or they interminably slow. This recording one is a little on the slow side, and the soloist irritates me beyond belief, but the harmonies are right and the words are there.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGMoGOFQULU&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 19 – The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation (Purcell)

We’re getting frighteningly close to Christmas, given how much I still have to do. And today’s Advent Carol is like the Holy Roman Empire, really – not a carol, and not about advent (which is particularly cheeky, since I’ve got some perfectly good carols on my list that there won’t be time for). It isn’t a carol because don’t think it was ever intended to be sung in church, but was rather intended as chamber music. And it isn’t Adventy, because even though it’s all about Mary, the lyrics suggest that this is either the episode with Jesus (like sheep) going astray at the Temple, or more probably during the Flight into Egypt, with toddler-Jesus gone (like sheep) astray in the wilderness.

(sorry about the sheep)

The trouble is, though, that I was trying to find Advent music by Purcell, and one of the terms I used was ‘Purcell Virgin Mary’. And then I saw this piece of music and it had ‘Expostulation’ in the title, which I think you will agree made it something I really had to listen to. How many songs have ‘Expostulation’ in the title? What if it had ‘expostulation’ in the lyrics and I never knew about it?

You see my problem. And then I listened to it, and not only is it entirely and utterly beautiful, but Christine Brandes, the soprano who sings this version, is just about perfect. And… I’ve never heard a song before that is truly from the point of view of Mary as a person (the Magnificat is gorgeous, but doesn’t give you that much of a sense of her personality) (Edited in December 2017 – Oh, younger Catherine, what were you thinking?  It totally does.  But this is not a theology blog, so I’m not going to wax lyrical on the subject here today.). And even though the words were unseasonal, I really liked them.

Anyway, faced with a choice of this beautiful recording, and one of the various ‘I Sing of a Maiden’s, none of which were quite perfect enough for me, the decision was easy.

No embedding, because the site won’t allow it, but follow the link to find something gorgeous.

The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation – Henry Purcell

Lyrics below:
Tell me, tell me some, some pitying angel,
Tell quickly, quickly, quickly say,
Where, where does my soul’s sweet darling stray,
In tiger’s or more cruel, more cruel cruel Herod’s way?
Ah, ah rather, rather let his little, little footsteps press
Unregarded through the wilderness,
Where milder, milder, where milder savages resort,
The desert’s safer, the desert’s safer than a tyrant’s court.
Why, why, fairest object of my love,
Why, why dost thou from my longing eyes remove?
Was it, was it a waking dream that did fortell thy wondrous birth,
Thy wondrous, wondrous birth?
No vision, no, no vision from above?
Where’s Gabriel, where’s Gabriel now that visited my cell?
I call, I call, I call: Gabriel! Gabriel!
He comes not.
Flatt’ring, flatt’ring hopes, farewell flatt’ring hopes, farewell.
Me Judah’s daughters once caress’d,
Call’d me of mothers the most, the most bless’d.
Now fatal change, of mothers most distress’d.
How, how shall my soul its motions guide?
How, how shall I stem the various, various tide,
Whilst faith and doubt my lab’ring soul divide?
For whilst of thy dear, dear sight beguil’d,
I trust the God, but oh! I fear, but oh! I fear the child.

Admit it, you would have made the same decision.

Edited in December 2017: I’d forgotten I found this piece while looking for Advent Carols.  I actually wound up singing it myself for an exam a few years ago.  And that video, I am allowed to embed, so here it is.

[vimeo 77330100 w=640 h=360]
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/77330100″>The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/catherineheloise”>Catherine Heloise</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

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Advent Calendar Day 18 – Rorate Coeli (Schütz)

Today’s post is a bit late, because I was attending a wedding, and because I was far too tired to get up early and do this beforehand.

But perhaps I should have, because today’s piece is so bright and lively and delightful that it would wake anyone up in a good mood. I’ve never sung this one or heard of it until I went seeking Advent music and kept hearing about this piece, but I’ve been playing it again and again and I really, really want to sing it now. It’s just so joyous, and feels more like a madrigal in the way it’s put together than any other church music I’ve heard; something about how close all the echoes come to each other or something, and its brisk tempo. It’s fast polyphony with lots of coloratura, and I think this is my new favourite kind of music, because I’m fairly sure I’ve ever sung anything quite like it. And for once a choir with female sopranos and altos!

Also, the text is rather delightful:

The heavens spill forth dew,
and the clouds rain down justice,
that the earth below might open up
and cause Our Savior to take seed.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCmoOvtFuds&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 17 – The Crown of Roses

Ah, the Russians! You can always rely on them for cheery music and uplifting lyrics! Today’s Advent piece is allegedly Tchaikovsky’s notion of a Christmas Carol. Myself, I would put it in Lent or maybe on Good Friday, but I’m no theologian, and if the Music Director thinks it’’s good enough for Christmas, then I think it’s good enough for Advent.

Besides, it’s gorgeous. I first sang this in Grade 4 or 5 – presumably in a different arrangement, but since I was a soprano at the time, that’s the part I have in my brain forever. But oh dear, those lyrics…. I mean, they really are beautiful, but for Christmas?

(incidentally, this is as close as you are going to get from me to anything by Rutter. He conducts this choir.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3j4RzUrgY&w=560&h=315]

Lyrics:

When Jesus Christ was yet a child
He had a garden small and wild
Wherein he cherished roses fair
And bound them into garlands there.

Now once as summertime drew nigh
There came a troop of children by
And seeing roses on the tree
With shouts they plucked them eagerly.

“Do you bind roses in your hair?”
They cried in scorn to Jesus there.
The boy said humbly, “Take I pray
All but the naked thorns away.”

Then of the thorns they made a crown
And with rough fingers pressed it down
Til on his forehead fair and young
Red drops of blood, like roses, sprung.

(and Merry Christmas to you, too, Mr Tchaikovsky)

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Advent Calendar Day 16 – O Thou that Tellest Good Tidings to Zion (G.F. Handel)

Another selection from Handel’s Messiah today, with the usual difficulty that *everyone* has recorded the Messiah and there are six hundred options and none of them are ever quite what I want (because this is one that I’ve studied as a solo, so I have particularly strong opinions on it!). And so again, I’ve ended up with a style of voice I normally wouldn’t like and certainly wouldn’t associate with Handel (too heavy, basically).

What made me choose this recording in the end was that all the other soloists sounded like mezzo sopranos – lovely and light in the coloratura bits, but lacking something in the lower range. This singer (sadly, I don’t know her name) is a true alto; I don’t think I’ve ever heard a voice of this type before, actually. And her low notes are just wonderful.

Interestingly, listening to the recording again in the background as I write this, I don’t like it that much – but when I switch to the YouTube page and watch her sing, I do. And then I come back here and don’t, so much – all of which suggests that a large part of this singer’s charm is in how she puts the song across. I suspect she would be even better live.

I’ll be interested to hear what you think of this one.

Edited in December 2017: Sigh.  This recording has now disappeared, and since I never knew who it was in the first place, I can’t find another recording of her.  And so I have spent another hour or so scouring YouTube for a proper contralto singing this aria and once again had to choose between the vocal quality that I find so fascinating and the style of singing that I think this aria wants!  Perhaps one just can’t have that depth of voice with the lightness of delivery on the coloratura and I’m seeking the impossible? 

But then I found Maureen Forrester, a Canadian operatic contralto, who really has some wonderful low notes and still makes the coloratura flow effortlessly.  Hooray!  (Having said that, these days I think I really do prefer a Mezzo-Soprano for this aria, but this is still pretty wonderful.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFZTrVJzt-o&w=560&h=315]