Monthly Archives: December 2011

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Advent Calendar Day 25 – MERRY CHRISTMAS

Huzzah! I survived a midnight mass as the lone soprano in descant hell – and I still have my vocal chords!!

I’ve been trying to figure out all day what I can possibly use for tonight’s carol. You see, I did all my favourite Midnight Mass ones last year, and it seems like cheating to repeat them. And then, I haven’t done The Holly And The Ivy this year, which is really a favourite of mine, but doesn’t seem to have the joyfulness required of a Christmas Day carol. And I want to do ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day’ again, but I think we all know why I shouldn’t.

Now we’re all going to have to go back and listen to those ones, aren’t we?

Right then. Like last year, I’ll celebrate Christmas with a trio (a Trinity?) of Christmas Carols that fit my mood. The first is a Mediaeval Baebes version of a medieval carol – Ecce Mundi Gaudium. I love the vibrance and energy of this, and the sense of joy, and just the general bounciness of it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr0DScNyEuk&w=560&h=315]

The second carol I’m sharing with you is Past Three O’Clock, which I sincerely hope it will *not* be by the time I click ‘post’ on this entry. It never gets sung at midnight mass (too early in the evening, perhaps?), but it speaks to me of the whole getting up in the middle of the night to go to church, or possibly the manger, on Christmas Eve. Also, infidel choristers find the whole bit about cheese from the dairy / bring they for Mary vastly amusing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9momjvte10&w=560&h=315]

Finally, a carol I’d forgotten until recently but remember vividly from my shopping centre carolling days as an undergraduate – The Shepherd’s Farewell, by Berlioz, affectionately known as ‘Carols on Acid’ because it’s kind of trippy and changes key twice a bar. Actually, I was told recently that Berlioz was rather fond of his opium, so perhaps the trippiness wasn’t just in our undergraduate minds.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpgWhHv2dJw&w=560&h=315]

I was going to stop there, but after singing all those descants tonight I can’t possibly end without a descanty one, now can I? I wanted to include the diabolical descant from Christians, Awake!, but apparently we are the only people insane enough to make sopranos sing top B flats at one in the morning. So here’s a recording of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, which is a fitting carol to end with, being the first carol I sing every year. This is the first carol in my work choir’s carol book, and we use it as our warm up, though we go a lot faster than this and we do not do the mad descant, because it actually requires a bass section, which we don’t usually have. You have to love a descant that involves the altos, too. Or at least, I have to love it.

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

Time to sign off from this year’s Advent Calendar, I think.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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Advent Calendar Day 24 – Magnificat (Telemann)

We aren’t doing Chris’s lovely Magnificat tonight, so I thought I’d go looking for one, and when I ran across Telemann, who I know only as that guy who wrote baroque recorder concertos, I thought I’d give him a try.

Well.

I’ve never heard anything quite like this piece of music, to be honest.  I can’t decide what I think of it.  It’s like a human clockwork music box.  With illustrations from the Très Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry.  And I’m not even sure if I like it, but it’s strangely compelling and not as insipid as I thought it was and I have to keep listening to it.  I’m also not entirely sure what language it is in – I suspect (from external evidence) that it might be in German – this is, apparently, his German Magnificat – but I can’t pick out a single word of German, and the group singing it is the Japanese Ensemble Planeta, so I’m beginning to wonder if it is in fact in Japanese instead.  Surely not? I also strongly suspect they have arranged it themselves, as Telemann is usually rather more orchestral in a somewhat Handelian style – I think they have grabbed all the instrumental parts and given them to the other voices.

Edited December 2017: Having listened to this quite a few more times by now, I still can’t make out most of the lyrics, but there is definitely a ‘laudate signore’ at the start, which suggests Latin, but not very traditional Latin?  But I think attempting to discern the words is probably not the point of this exercise – best to just let the music wash over one…

I think I like the effect.  I know I like the images.  And it’s certainly something a bit different.  Also, I keep having to listen to it again, so maybe I do really like it after all… Enjoy!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbjixX93pcw&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 22 – Rorate Coeli (Schütz)

I included this one last year.  I still love it, so we’re having it again.  Besides, it turns out that this is the text for Advent 4, which was last weekend (a time which seems very, very long ago).  I love the liveliness of this, and the beautiful singing, and I am determined to learn it and find people to sing it with one of these days.

No more today because I am too tired to think (and, alas, too tired to nap).  But at least I am on holiday now.  If I can actually *get* to sleep, I’ll be able to catch up a bit.

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

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Advent Calendar Day 21 – Thou Knowest Lord the Secrets of Our Hearts

I was going to give you Josquin Des Prez today (O Virgo Prudentissima), and I actually got as far as finding the recording and putting it in here, but then found that I had absolutely nothing to say about it except that it is pretty (which it is), and that you should certainly listen to it (which you should).

So instead we are having more funereal music today, but since I have it on excellent authority that Advent is also a time for contemplating our ends, I’m not going to feel guilty about this.  We can have Rorate Coeli tomorrow.  This fits my mood today.

We sang this for the first time right before the start of Advent this year, possibly because our choir director shares the views of Tree on this subject.  We rehearse most of our music twice before performing it, and at the second rehearsal we learned that a member of the congregation had died quite suddenly that day – one of those women who volunteers all over the place and organises readings and is on the tea roster and the flower roster and the church council and the English conversation group, and so forth.  Suddenly, the piece was very appropriate.

I’ve spent the evening figuring out sheet music and organising a time to tape an accompaniment for the songs I will be singing at Nonno’s funeral.  I won’t be singing this, but it’s what’s in my head right now.  And it is, I think, a beautiful piece of music.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tEiPKy-1kw&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 20 – Dona Nobis Pacem

My grandfather died today.  He was 91, and had actually been doing very well for someone who had an awful lot of very dodgy organs for some time, beating all comers at chequers and scopa and apparently being something of a social center at the nursing home where he has been since March.  He’d only really been sick for a few days – and it was only yesterday when it started to look serious.  We found out this morning that everything was failing and it was only a matter of time, and mum rang at around 10:30, while I was in an all-Institute meeting, to say that he was unconscious and she was heading down to the LaTrobe Valley (2 hours away) to say goodbye.

Only at 11:00, I had to conduct our much-advertised and anticipated final work choir performance.  We even had a harp to accompany us.  This did not seem like something I could cancel at the last minute.  Also, I needed to get my head around what was going on, and a choir break seemed like the way to go.

So I went down and conducted and sang, which was unbelievably surreal, because we were actually doing really well and even had fancy things like dynamics, and sometimes I was fully in the music, but mostly I was either encouraging different parts or  calculating all the things I had to do this week and working out which ones I could drop and whether I could get down there today or tomorrow and how I was going to get everything done and who I could give various tasks to.

We sing Silent Night in five languages, including Italian, and the Italian version made me think of Nonno, so we sang it twice.  And we sang, too, a piece that isn’t strictly a Christmas carol, but seems appropriate to this or any season – Dona Nobis Pacem.  And I have to say, we have never sung it so well.  So we did that one twice, too.

And then I gave everyone cake, thanked them, and ran upstairs to send a flurry of emails delegating everything in sight and to let my bosses know that I was off to Morwell.  And about half an hour after I got there, Nonno quietly stopped breathing.

So that was that.  I’m not feeling especially Adventish today, but if Dona Nobis is good enough for my choir, it’s good enough for this Advent Calendar.  The only flaw in this version is that she stops after the very first time you get three parts – I wanted it to keep going for a lot longer.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8B1YEi_wQ&w=560&h=315]

(oh, and there was one moment of humour in the afternoon, when we were discussing whether Nonno should be buried wearing his wedding ring.  “He’d better be,” said one of my aunts.  “Mum will be really annoyed if he gets there and he’s lost another one!”.  Apparently, Nonno went through three or four rings during his marriage, and Nonna used to get understandably upset with him for losing them!)

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Advent Calendar Day 19 – I Saw a Swete Semly Syght (Trad.)

Today’s carol is chosen simply because of its lullaby-like refrain. I was up until 2:30am last night (this morning) finishing confectionery, and I’m so tired that lullabys are very appealing right now…

This carol is medieval both in melody (all those open 5ths!) and lyrics, and is another one that doesn’t really bear much relationship to anything in the Bible, but is rather imagining Mary lulling baby Jesus to sleep. It’s a very gentle piece of music, and it certainly speaks to me tonight…

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

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Advent Calendar Day 18 – Ave Maria (Rombi)

After yesterday’s fairly boisterous Australian carol, I wanted a contrast – something very classical and beautiful.  Also, I’ve been itching for an excuse to include Natalie Dessay’s voice somewhere in this.  Ave Maria isn’t, of course, really an Advent Carol, but once again I’m claiming all Mary music as Advent appropriate.

Besides, it’s Natalie Dessay sounding absolutely angelic.  Do I really need to justify that?

(and now I’d better go and practice sounding angelic myself, since we have our carol service tonight…)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_zm0pNifWI&w=560&h=315]

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Advent Calendar Day 17 – Christmas Day (James & Wheeler)

After yesterday’s very wintry carol, how could I resist a proper Australian summer carol? I make my work carollers sing this one every year – the international postdocs love it to bits, and the locals all learned it in primary school, along with The Three Drovers and The Carol Of The Birds. The latter is possibly one of the easiest songs in the world to sing horribly – the ‘Orana’ can sound exactly like a cockatoo screeching if you aren’t careful.

Edited to add: on reflection, I wonder if the cockatoo screech was what the composer was aiming for?  Hard to say, really.

There are, in fact, a good few Australian carols (bush carols, really – urban Australia doesn’t inspire anyone to song, apparently), most of which seem to work from the premise that Jesus was born in Australia – Mary lulls him to sleep to the sound of boobooks and black swans guide cattle drovers to his cradle. When I was seven this bothered me a lot because that just wasn’t what happened. The one I’m sharing today manages not to do that, which is probably why I absolutely loved this the first time I heard it – which was, as it happens, during that Christmas we spent in England. For reasons that escape me, we actually learned this one in primary school, though it didn’t have the second verse, and instead had a first verse with the robin under the eaves sheltering from the snow. I wonder if the teacher wrote that verse, because I’ve never seen or heard it since?

Strictly speaking, I think the Carol of the Birds is a better carol, and there are a number of other Australian carols with better music to them. But this has always been to me the quintessential Australian Christmas carol, and on a day when Melbourne has suddenly noticed it’s summer, it feels like the only possible choice.

Enjoy!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb9dCJ0qKbc&w=560&h=315]

The North Wind is tossing the leaves
The red dust is over the town
The sparrows are under the eaves
And the grass in the paddock is brown
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ Child, our heavenly King!

The tree ferns in green gullies sway
The cool stream flows silently by
The joy bells are greeting the day
And the chimes are adrift in the sky
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ Child, our heavenly King!

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Advent Calendar Day 16 – In the Bleak Midwinter (Darke *and* Holst)

Another slightly better-known carol, this one with lyrics by Christina Rosetti, who certainly never intended for it to be sung, since it scans differently in every verse. I love this carol for the words, which I find very evocative – of, as it happens, entirely the wrong season for us. This sort of carol reminds me of the Christmas we spent in England when I was a child – though less the Christmas, which was in London, and more the months leading up to it which were spent living at York University, in very storybook English surrounds – icy ponds, stepping stones, red squirrels, proper autumn trees and conkers and medieval and roman ruins. I still love York and undoubtedly view it through the rose-tinted glasses of someone who hasn’t been there for about 17 years, and these words and the clearness of the song remind me of it.

This is not the arrangement which I know well, and which we are singing on Sunday (that would be the Holst arrangement) and which I know better, nor is it the arrangement that I heard sung once when I was at school and am clearly never going to find because I have no idea who the composer was and YouTube just keeps offering me Holst and Darke. I can never decide whether I like this arrangement more than the other, but in the end, I loved the singing of this one, and the soprano and then tenor solo.

Also, the Darke arrangement is really strange if you are are accustomed to Holst – it’s similar enough that it *almost* sounds like it might be a harmony or descant to it (it isn’t – I’ve tried singing one over the other, and they don’t quite work. But it’s very close).

And now I’ve just realised that Darke skips my favourite verse, which is the one about angels and archangels worshiping Jesus night and day while, Mary worships her son with a kiss. There’s a lovely domesticity and humanity about it which I love.  So you are going to have to have *both* versions, even though I don’t really love the singing on the second one, and I’m going to give you the lyrics too, and then you can decide which you like best.

I think I love all of them.

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

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0aIQp9V4s&w=560&h=315]

Edited to add: Chanticleer did a magnificent arrangement of the Holst, which is too good not to include, but not at all traditional.  And they skipped the breastful of milk verse, which is also not acceptable.  You have to sing all the verses, people!

Lyrics:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.