Monthly Archives: December 2015

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Advent Calendar Day 7 – Fantasia on Christmas Carols (Vaughan Williams)

Today’s post was going to be the gorgeous King’s Singers version of The Truth Sent From Above, but then I realised that it might be better to save my crush on the King’s Singers for later in December.  Besides, I’m pretty sure I do The Truth Sent From Above every year, and every version misses the verses about eating the apple, leaving one with the progression from ‘woman was made with man to dwell’ to ‘thus we were born to endless woe’, implying a line of causation that I find a little insulting (if nonetheless amusing).

Anyway.

I’ve been vaguely aware for some time that Vaughan Williams did a Fantasia on Christmas Carols that started with a version of the Truth Sent From Above, but for one reason or another, I’ve never got around to listening to it.  This year, I have, and it’s rather lovely – and, importantly, doesn’t skip those all important apple-eating verses!

Of course, this is not the only carol in the Fantasia, and Vaughan Williams has pulled together a number of the more obscure and folky Christmas carols in the English tradition into a rather lovely ten minutes of choral music.  I especially like the bit when the Sussex Carol keeps on coming in and interposing itself on other carols.

I believe the baritone soloist in this recording is Stephen Roberts – whoever he is, he really has a lovely, effortless sound, which fits this piece very well.

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Advent Calendar Day 6 – 12 Days of Christmas Confusion

A bit of a change of pace today, because Friday is a day for Frivolity, or at least for taking a break from fruit-themed carols.  Though, of course, there is a little bit of fruit in this carol too.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is not an Advent Carol (in fact, it is referring to the 12 days between December 25th and January 6th, so it is decidedly post-Advent), but it is well known, and, as it turns out, is also the sort of carol that begs for parody.  Some of the parodies are alarmingly sexist (nope, not linking to that one), and others are just a bit of downunder fun for those of us who are in entirely the wrong season and don’t really know what partridges look like.

And then you get the really clever stuff, like this gorgeous Twelve Days of Christmas Confusion, in which the choir is arguing with itself, singing entirely different carols, and occasionally forgetting which particular feast it’s celebrating, all in perfect tune.

I believe that this particular piece was composed by Straight No Chaser, but I rather love the version by Angel City Chorale – it’s the girly backing vocals in the last bit that appeal.  Though Straight No Chaser has significantly more dreidel.  It’s a hard choice, but someone has to make it…

Happy Friday!

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Advent Calendar Day 5 – The Cherry Tree Carol (Hunt)

Maintaining this week’s theme of fruit (hey, sometimes you just have to embrace these things), here’s a carol that comes from a genre I am hereby dubbing ‘Medieval Bible Filk’, or possibly ‘Medieval Bible Fanfic’.  It’s inspired by the New Testament (specifically from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, something I didn’t even knew existed until I looked it up), but it isn’t strictly canon, and it clearly comes from the mind of someone who was sitting there during a sermon one day and thought ‘well, it’s all very well for Mary to say that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, but I bet Joseph wasn’t too happy about that.’

(Incidentally, I’ve been told that churches dedicated to St Joseph are pretty rare in Italy, because the perception was that Joseph, for all his holiness, was also kind of a cuckold, and this didn’t sit well with the sort of men who were providing money to build churches.  Poor Joseph just can’t win.)

In this carol, Mary is pregnant, and she is craving cherries.  Since she is in a cherry orchard with Joseph, this seems like an easy fix, and she asks Joseph to pick some cherries for her.  Joseph is evidently having a bad day, because his response is that if she wants cherries so much, she should ask the guy who got her pregnant to pick them for her.  At this point, either the cherry tree bows down of its own accord, or the baby in Mary’s womb commands it to do so.  Mary gets her cherries, Joseph apologises, and everyone lives happily ever after.  There are a LOT of versions of this, but I love the mix of voices in this one.

The song doesn’t paint poor Joseph in a very good light, but clearly it had significant popular appeal, because there are lots of different versions not just of the tune, but of the text, with Joseph attaining varying levels of snarkiness, and Mary’s triumph when the cherry tree bends down to her being illustrated in greater or lesser degrees.  There are versions which go all the way through to anticipating Easter, versions where Joseph himself asks the tree to bow down to Mary, versions where Joseph starts conversing with the babe in the womb and Mary is just a side issue to the whole story, and versions with no cherries at all (still part of the same carol sequence, allegedly).  There’s a great article on the carol here, if you are interested – I fell down an internet rabbit hole reading it, though, so be warned. I suspect the appeal comes from the very human light in which the Holy Family is painted – grumpy Joseph, Mary with her cravings and her ‘heavy load’.

Incidentally, that appeal apparently hasn’t faded.  While looking for a version of the carol to share with you, I found not just a version by Joan Baez (a folk classic) but versions by Sting (regrettable, but entertaining) and by Annie Lennox (a version with absolutely no cherries in it, but great fun, and with a bonus African children’s choir on backing vocals).

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Advent Calendar Day 4 – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (Elizabeth Poston)

Continuing our apple theme from yesterday, here’s a modern carol that feels a bit medieval.  The lyrics are from an 18th century poem whose author is unknown except for the initials ‘R.H.’, and they aren’t strictly Christmassy, but that hasn’t stopped the choirs of King’s and St. John’s Colleges Cambridge and Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland (among, surely, many others) from including it in carol services, so as far as I’m concerned, this makes it fair game for an advent calendar!

I actually found two settings of this poem, and had a difficult choice deciding which one to feature.  On the one hand, we had this beautiful, reflective, 20th-century-trying-to-be-medieval setting by Elizabeth Poston, which is very sweet and restful and suits the lyrics, and is, in fact, the version of the carol that I fell in love with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm3fZDZxiko

And then on the other hand, it turns out that a chap called Jeremiah Ingalls got there first in the early 19th century, with this incredibly jolly version that I am now absolutely desperate to sing, even though every part of me that has any sort of musical sensibility kind of secretly knows that it is completely the wrong sort of tune for these words.  I’m sorry, but if you are singing about how you are going to take your rest under Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, perhaps you should consider not being quite so energetic about it?  Or is that why you need to take your rest?

So you are getting Elizabeth Poston, because I think she understood the spirit of the poem rather better than Jolly Jeremiah Ingalls.  But if you want to know what has me so fascinated about the latter, you can follow this link to find out…

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
I missed of all but now I see
‘Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest a while
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

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Advent Calendar Day 3 – Adam Lay Y Bounden

It’s not advent without Adam Lay Y Bounden.  This has been a favourite carol of mine for a long time, particularly the version by Boris Ord, with that gorgeous soaring ‘Deo Gracias’ at the end of it.

Admittedly, my initial delight in the carol came from the delightful seeming-illogic of lyrics:

“Adam lay y bounden, bounden in a bond
Four thousand winter thought he not to long
And all for an apple, an apple that he took
As clerkes finden written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been, the apple taken been
Ne had never Our Lady had been Heavene Queen
Blessed be the time that apple taken was
Therefore we moun singen “Deo Gracias”

Which, abridged, seems to mean “What a good thing that our forebears sinned, because without that, we would never have had Jesus.”  (I’ve seen a similar sentiment expressed rather more crudely in graffiti, but I’m not going to share that here.)

Anyway, giggling choristers aside, I’m informed that this isn’t just the kind of theology you get when the Bible is only available in Latin and your local non-Latin-reading peasantry decides to write songs about it anyway (but stay tuned for that sort of theology later in December), but is actually really explaining the idea that “Sin has separated us from God, but grace has brought us nearer to God than we ever were before sin divided us from him.” (From a sermon by Spurgeon, with thanks to my friend Virginia)

(A little part of me strongly suspects that Spurgeon was just trying to deal with the thoroughly ingrained terrible Adam Lay Y Bounden logic as best he could – and doing so really quite admirably – but that is probably just me being a wicked and frivolous person).

OK, that’s far more theology than anyone really needs at this hour of the morning, so to compensate, you are getting not one, but TWO settings of these lyrics!

I was looking for the Boris Ord played at a more decorous speed than that favoured by King’s College, when I found this lovely performance of both the Ord and the Ireland settings.  I didn’t even know that Ireland had written a setting of this, so that’s another delightful YouTube discovery.  I think I still prefer Ord, but I love having both of them to choose from.

If this is all way too serious and classical for you, you’ll be glad to know that several contemporary Medieval-themed bands have had a good play with this song too.  The Mediaeval Baebes have a very simple unison version that has somewhat ear-wormy properties, and the German group, Faun, have a gloriously bouncy version with the verses mixed up in a manner that completely clouds any theological argument at all, but is nonetheless good fun to listen to.  Enjoy!