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Advent Calendar Day 11: Wachet Auf, ruft uns di Stimme (J.S. Bach)

I know, I know, we had Bach just a few days ago, but this week’s schedule of Advent music is full of dreamy 19th and 20th century music, and I thought a bit of up-beat Baroque was just what we needed for contrast.

Besides, this is a seriously cool piece of music, and this choir and orchestra perform it just impeccably (and I love the way the violinists are, without exception bobbing on the first beat of each bar. It’s like a little minuet for violinists!).  Also, hearken to the alto joy at 4:01!  We sang this maybe seven years ago in choir, and I can still do that bit from memory – it’s the only way one can possibly get one’s voice around the notes, because nobody can sight read that fast.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz0FmmNrTck&w=560&h=315]

What to else say about this?  Well, it’s one of the classic Advent texts – I’m pretty sure I heard it at the service last Sunday, though it must be confessed that all my Advent services are beginning to blur together.  I’ve certainly sung the hymnified version in the last week, and also heard the organ solo version.  After a while, one starts suspecting that Bach spent a large portion of his career writing variations on Wachet Auf, actually.  But I digress.

The text is generally translated ‘Zion hears the watchmen’s voices’, but it’s closer to ‘Wake up, the voices call us – it is the watchmen on the roofs’, and it is all about the Bridegroom coming (with digressions about Wise Virgins, who presumably have lamps, but Bach figured we knew all about that, and left the lamps out).  It tends to be played a lot especially in early Advent, because it is all about preparing for the arrival of Christ.  Though I think the implication is more Second Coming than mangers and oxen and Bethlehem.

I do love this rendition of it – it’s lively and strongly sung and definitely wakes one up of a morning.

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Advent Calendar Day 10: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (Bairstow)

Have you recovered from yesterday’s post yet?  I’m still giggling about it, to be honest.  But moving along, here’s a somewhat more conventional setting of the same text.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C0I3YgMHiI&w=420&h=315]

Edward Bairstow was one of the great composers of English (Anglican) church music in the late 19th to early 20th century, and his work does feel very English – and Edwardian – to me.  There is a sense of old-world restraint to it, though this certainly doesn’t stop it from being both lush in its harmonies and evocative in sound.  That bass and tenor line at the very start (and end) of the piece sends shivers down the spine, and when the choir starts singing about the choirs of angels it’s one of the most beautiful vocal lines out there.  And the Alleluia is – as it should be – like a shout of joy.

(I use the word shout advisedly.  That is not what you are supposed to do with Bairstow… but most choirs can’t resist it in the forte sections.  I’m not entirely sure, for instance, that this one did.)

It occurs to me that I’ve used this text twice in two days without actually saying why I think of it as an Advent piece, but I’ve sort of figured that the whole ‘Jesus Christ to earth descending’ is a bit of a hint.

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Advent Calendar Day 9: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (Leah)

Good morning!  Are you ready for your Monday Morning Symphonic Metal Advent Music Wake Up Call?

Did you even know you could have one?

And aren’t you glad you now do?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckoRTTJy5v0&w=420&h=315]

 

I’ve always thought that this was one of those texts that just inspires people – every setting I’ve ever heard of it has been truly gorgeous. The traditional melody, which Leah is having an absolute *party* with in this recording (and I cannot express just how gleeful her version makes me), is usually sung rather more like this, and it’s one of those hymns that always makes me happy when I see it come up in the pewsheet.  It has a lovely grandeur to it, and is beautifully set for the voice.  Singing it feels really, really good.

As for this version… well, I honestly don’t know enough about the genre to judge it in an educated fashion, but it does make me happy.  Perhaps not for the right reasons, and perhaps not in the way Leah intended, but I do think that’s a truly fascinating thing to do to such a stately piece of music.  And the guitar solo is just *perfect*.

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Advent Calendar Day 8: There is No Rose (Benjamin Britten)

Who would ever have thought that I’d be sitting here recommending Britten to anyone?  He usually leaves me feeling rather puzzled and frustrated, because he always seems to have the most interesting ideas for texts, and then his music just does nothing for me,

And then there’s this setting of the medieval carol ‘There is no rose of swych vertu‘, and it is lush and gorgeous and altogether breathtakingly beautiful and it was written by Britten?  Astonishing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M94QmA5GzSw&w=560&h=315]

I have to say, too, that this choir has a wonderful sound – there’s a lot of depth to it, and the ending is impeccable.  I find this particularly interesting, because it was originally written for treble choir, and I keep finding reviews of other performances which point out that a boys’ choir or a children’s choir is the only proper way to sing this and the way Britten intended it and so forth, and the children’s choirs are certainly very good, but it’s a shallower sound, and to my ear it lacks something.  (Possibly triplets.  Everyone seems to have a lot of trouble with the triplets, and some of the children’s choirs have given up entirely.) They also have a tendency to go much faster than the adult choirs, which doesn’t seem quite right for this piece.

Here’s a version by the New London Children’s Choir, so you can compare for yourself.  Their top notes are thrilling, but I think I still prefer the sound of the women’s chorus.

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Advent Calendar Day 7: Alma redemptoris Mater (Dufay)

Did I mention that everyone and their best friend had done a version of Alma Redemptoris Mater? I could almost fill a calendar with just this text.

I found this version, by Guillaume Dufay, when I was looking for the one by Hildegarde of Bingen, and I think it’s just gorgeous.  It has that sound that we tend to associate with medieval music, which seems to be about open fifths, and lots of minor second intervals in the melody.  This is really a late medieval /early renaissance sound – Hildegarde is more contemporary with the Crusades and other really bad medieval ideas.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZcN7GoN_Gc&w=420&h=315]

I’d never heard of Dufay before this, so I went and did a little internet research and discovered that Dufay was a Netherlandish composer of the fifteenth century.  This instantly makes me happy, because I am a bit of a Ricardian, and I know that Richard III spent a bit of time in the Netherlands when he was Richard of Gloucester, and this might have been the music he heard when he went to church there.  So maybe I’m sharing a musical experience with my favourite Plantagenet monarch here.

But even if I’m not, this is wonderful music, and I will have to seek out more of Dufay’s work.  I love the stillness in the solo sections and the clean, spare sound that somehow prevails even in the sections with the countermelody.  Very gorgeous stuff.

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Advent Calendar Day 6: Bereite Dich, Zion (J.S. Bach)

After all that lovely, flowing plainchant from yesterday, I thought we needed something a little stricter in tempo and generally more modern… and what could be more modern than Bach?  Well, several centuries worth of composers, admittedly, but Bach was pretty modern for his time, having a fine time playing with the new-fangled Well Tempered Clavier and demonstrating that one really could compose in any key.  Piano students the world over do not thank him for this.  But it was pretty hot stuff at the time.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLU4XnW-fFQ&w=420&h=315]

This aria comes from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, but technically fits into the Advent theme, because it is another ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord’ sort of text.  In fact, the lyrics translate roughly as “Prepare yourself, Sion, with tender efforts, to behold your lovely one, your beloved, near you soon! Your cheeks must now glow much more radiantly, hurry to love the Bridegroom with passion!”.

As I said, hot stuff.  But you’d never know it from the beautiful restraint of the music.  I especially love Anne Sofie von Otter’s rendition of this piece – her style is very delicate and baroque, and fits perfectly with the violin – she even shares some of the trills.  And her ornaments are just right. Lovely.

Edited in December 2017: Alas, the video of Anne Sofie von Otter singing Bereite Dich Zion is no longer available, so instead I’ve inserted a version sung by Elisabeth Kulman and the Münchner Bach Choir, which is extra fun, because it gives you a bit of context, and the pleasing image of the conductor singing the role of the Evangelist.  It’s a bit hearty and less delicate than von Otter’s version, but I still like it very much. If you would like to hear Anne Sofie von Otter in action, here she is singing ‘Schlafe, mein Liebster‘, also from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

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Advent Calendar Day 5: Alma Redemptoris Mater (Hildegard of Bingen)

There’s something about Hildegard of Bingen’s music that always feels cooling and soothing to the mind.  I think it’s the gentleness of the plainchant, and the sweetness of female voices which is so refreshing and relaxing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2AcbPaa6xo&w=420&h=315]

The lyrics are a hymn to Mary (Sweet Mother of the Redeemer), and are a traditional text for Advent. Just about everyone has had a try at these lyrics (in fact, I understand that Palestrina wrote two different versions, which might be a thought for another day), but I love the simplicity of Hildegard’s version, and the sense of unity in time and space that one gets from listening to music that is nearly a thousand years old… and yet written for the season we are in today.

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Advent Calendar Day 4: Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord (Michael Wise)

Now that we’ve seen what Handel does with Every Valley and Isaiah generally, I thought it might be fun to see what someone else does with the same text.  Also, of course, we sang this piece on Sunday and I loved it immediately.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ZeM1KLMlM&w=420&h=315]

Michael Wise was born nearly forty years before Handel, but died quite young – in a duel, if I recall correctly – so their paths did not cross.  And nor did their music.  If you thought that Handel liked to show off occasionally  by using music to illustrate the words, well, he had nothing on Wise, who took this to an extreme degree.  I especially like ‘the crooked shall be made straight’, and later ‘get the up into the mountains’, though the bit where the grass withereth is also good.  Wise feels much earlier than Handel, to my ear.  Where Handel pretty much wrote the book on English Baroque Oratorios, Wise was still playing with verse anthems, and harks back much more to Gibbons in his style of composing.  Which is better?  I really couldn’t say.  I’d hate to do without either of them.

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Advent Calendar Day 3: Ev’ry Valley (Handel)

This aria is pretty much a requirement for the first week of Advent.  For one thing, it’s from Handel’s Messiah, which is compulsory listening at this time of year, at least in my world.  For another, it’s one of the classic texts for the service of nine lessons and carols which we do at Wesley each year.  I always have a hard time in that service keeping still, because almost every text read is something I know music for.  (Actually, with more than a dozen years of church choir singing, I’m getting to be that way in an awful lot of services.  One really does wind up with an extensive knowledge of the King James translation, at least.)

Of course, the question is always which version of this aria to use, because everyone has done one.  I am usually unable to resist Ian Bostridge’s absolutely impeccable version – I love his lightness of touch with the coloratura, and also I have a serious musical crush on him, so there’s that, too.  Or there’s the version by Jon Vickers, which I have been told by wiser heads that I should not like, but I secretly do anyway.

But while I was trolling YouTube, listening to more versions of Ev’ry Valley than any sane person should have to endure, I came across this very cheerful and bouncy version sung by Juan Diego Florez, a Peruvian tenor, known for his bel canto roles, and I found it rather irresistible.  I suspect that a person of true musical refinement (i.e., not me) would prefer a somewhat more sedate pace for this aria, but it’s certainly fun hearing someone go at the coloratura like that and get it right.  Very exciting to listen to – you go, Juan!

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Advent Calendar Day 2: The Record of John (Orlando Gibbons)

I know I link to this every year, but to me, this is where Advent starts.  I’ve been singing this with the Wesley Choir for about twelve years now, most of that time as the alto soloist, though I have also dabbled with the first alto and soprano lines in this and other choirs.  It is, I think, one of the most beautiful and evocative pieces of church music out there, and whenever we walk into choir on that day in late November and our conductor plays the opening bars, some part of me just settles into a place where all is well, and Advent is here, and it’s all just *right*.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9pE5vrgBHQ&w=420&h=315]

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