Tag Archives: advent calendar

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Advent Calendar Day 15: There is no rose of such virtue – Maconchy

I thought I’d finish this sequence with a 20th century arrangement by a woman composer, Elizabeth Maconchy. Maconchy was born in 1907 in Hertfordshire, England, and seems to have written mostly for string quartets and chamber orchestras, though she wrote a handful of operas for children.

There aren’t a lot of women composers out there, mostly because performing music is a cooperative endeavour, and so eras when a woman’s sphere was supposed to be the home, it was far harder for a woman to get her work performed and into the public eye than it was for, say, a woman writer or artist, who could work alone (and publish under a male name if necessary).  So I’m inclined to feature women composers when I see them.

Having said that, I would have picked this out of all the modern arrangements of this text simply for the high, lively ‘allelulias’ at the start, which sound to me like a particularly delighted chorus of angels.  I like the lightness and delicacy of this piece very much, and it’s easy to see how Maconchy’s style would adapt itself to chamber ensembles.

 

 

 

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Advent Calendar Day 14: There is No Rose of Such Virtue – Chanticleer

I bet you thought that Jesus was the only rose in this story.  Surprise!  Mary also gets to be a rose.  Obviously, this horticultural affinity runs in the family.

There is no rose of such virtue is a medieval text with literally dozens of settings available.  Everyone has done his or her own version, and it seems to have been especially popular in the 20th century (I feel like there was a bit of a medieval revival in the 20th century), with versions by Britten, Joubert and the Medieval Baebes, to name a few of my favourites.  (Or Sting, to name an amusing but unfortunate non-favourite.)

But the original tune is actually incredibly beautiful in its own right, and I especially love Chanticleer’s arrangement – have I mentioned recently that I’m a sucker for male voices singing in harmony?  This is, admittedly, quite a repetitive piece of music, but I rather like the meditative effect of listening to it while enjoying the gallery of Madonna and Child paintings.  I hope you do, too.

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Advent Calendar Day 13: Den yndigste rose er funden – Klug / Faurschou

Just in case you thought that the only people in the Medieval era comparing Jesus to a rose were the English, and the Germans, and anyone who spoke Latin, here’s a Danish carol dating back to 1542 on a similar theme.  Having said that… I don’t actually speak Danish, so I’m rather relying on this translation for that information.

The melody is attributed to Josef Klug, a printer in 16th century Germany who seems to have particularly specialised in hymnbooks – it’s a little hard to know whether he was a composer or not; German Wikipedia doesn’t seem to think so, but a lot of church music seems to be attributed to him. The text is definitely by Hans Adolph Brorson, an 18th century Danish Pietist Bishop and hymnwriter.

I had trouble choosing a preferred arrangement for this.  This version, sung by DR Pigekoret, looks like a more classic rendering of the hymn, and I like it very much, but in the end, I decided to go with this more reflective version, arranged by Ole Faurschou, a contemporary composer and conductor from Vienna who now lives in Denmark.  (I got extremely excited when I saw the word ‘Eurovision’ in his Danish biography, but Google Translate informs me that the Eurovision contest in question was the Eurovision Choir Grand Prix, so there are probably far fewer sequins involved than I was envisaging…) (Key changes, on the other hand, he is clearly up for…)

 

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Advent Calendar Day 12: Virga Jesse – Bruckner

Basically, I’ll take any excuse to listen to (or sing) Bruckner.  I am not always a huge fan of Romantic music, but I love the richness and lushness of Bruckner’s choral harmonies, and his tendency to set the sopranos soaring at key moments in the music.  Also, I like to pretend that I’m related to him, because my Brukner relatives come from the same corner of the world as he did, and they were musicians… and never mind the fact that Bruckner/Brukner is a very common name and Vienna was the place where musicians tended to end up if at all possible!

The English text here fits nicely with our blossoming rose theme (though roses don’t actually get mentioned this time):

The rod of Jesse hath blossomed: a Virgin hath brought forth God and man: God hath restored peace, reconciling in Himself the lowest with the highest. Alleluia.

I love the way Bruckner paints with music in this piece. In the early section, the choir parts just grow and bloom into ‘floruit’ (blossomed), and the after the firm certainty of the Virgin bringing forth God and Man, and restoring peace, we return to a lovely, soft major key for the reconciliation part.   And the Alleluias are just as full of joy as they should be.

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Advent Calendar Day 11: Det är en ros utsprungen – Praetorius / Sandström

So now that we’ve prepared the highway, and made it nice and straight with the rough places plain and so forth, it it’s time to plant some flowers by the side of the road.  Theme number three is all things roses and blossoms, and really, I could have devoted an entire Advent Calendar to this theme if I’d wanted to – it was super popular throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods, had a resurgence with the Romantic composers of the 19th century, and got really big again in the 20th century.

Let’s start with one of the oldest and most famous of these texts – Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo how a rose up-springing).  The original text appears to be from the Cologne Gesangbuch of 1599 and depicts Jesus as the rosebud blooming from Jesse’s branch, i.e., Mary.  This hymn has been translated into a lot of other languages – there are at least three English translations that I know of, one of which has the oceans clapping their hands in verse three (something that I assure you the German text does not include).

The most famous arrangement is that of Michael Praetorius, a 16th-17th century German composer.  The tune is older than that, but the Praetorius harmonies (sung here by the King’s Singers) are pretty wonderful, and I don’t think anyone has even tried to improve on them.

Having said that… I think I’ve sung this piece every Advent for at least the last decade, so when I came across this eerie, modern version by contemporary Swedish composer, Jan Sandström, I couldn’t resist it.  If you listen closely, it still has all of Praetorius’s harmonies in it… there’s just a lot of strange, atmospheric stuff going on at the same time.  And I do rather love the film they’ve chosen to put with it here.  For a scene with very little actual snow in it, it does convey the feeling of winter and cold very effectively.

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Advent Calendar Day 10: The Record of John – Gibbons

I really had intended to leave The Record of John out of my Advent calendar this year, especially as I have more Gibbons planned for you later in December, but then I made the mistake of listening to it again, and I just couldn’t.  I really do think this is one of the most amazing pieces of Advent music ever written, and it just doesn’t feel like Advent to me until I’ve sung the part about the voice that crieth in the wilderness.

(Which is sad, because I haven’t actually had the opportunity to sing this piece for some years now, and I miss it quite desperately.)

Like the Michael Wise piece from last Thursday, this is a verse anthem, but where other composers use music to paint a picture of the words, Gibbons takes the approach of using the music to capture the natural inflections of speech, at least in the solo line.  It makes him very easy to sing with feeling, and I think also heightens the emotional impact of the music.

But really, you don’t need me to tell you why this is beautiful.  You would be far better off just listening to it, and finding out for yourself.

PS – So I just went and had a look at Gibbons’ biography, and he apparently died of an apoplexy aged only 41.  Spookily, this is the same age at which Michael Wise died (though he died while brawling with a night watchman).  The moral of the story: don’t write verse anthems, or you will die young.  And let’s not even get started on Purcell, who only made it to 36.  Come to think of it, he wrote verse anthems, too.  Really, don’t write verse anthems if you want to grow old…

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Advent Calendar Day 9: Prepare ye the way of the Lord – Godspell

In vain I have struggled.  It will not do.  My feelings will not be repressed.  I cannot possibly end this sequence without earworming you all with Godspell.

I was going to apologise, but unfortunately any apology would completely lack sincerity, because I have loved Godspell ever since I was little and we used to play it on tapes in the car.  And I’ve loved if even more since my awesome primary school music teacher (Greg Mason, if you are reading this, you really were an inspiration) made Godspell the school production for the Grade 4-6 classes.

Which, in retrospect, was probably ridiculously cute.  But we thought it was fantastic, and my fellow Grade 4s and I all liked to see how fast we could sing the ‘Some men are born to live at ease’ song without getting completely tongue tied, and I’m pretty sure that every single one of us can still sing the entire musical, word for word, from beginning to the end.  Except for the Turn Back, O Man song, which was considered too Adult and Racy for 10-12 year old girls.  (It’s an awesome song, so yes, I know that one by heart, too, but not because of school.)

I really do think Godspell is an extremely good musical, and there are some great songs in there – I would love to sing the Godspell version of ‘We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land’ at church sometime, or, for that matter, ‘O Bless the Lord My Soul’, which is just a fabulous gospel piece.

Incidentally, the sound you can hear at the start of this recording is a shofar, which is the ram’s horn instrument mentioned in the Bible, which gets blown at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  So this post is not just about sharing the 1970s music theatre love – it’s also educational!  (For my non-Jewish readers, anyway.  Though I imagine I don’t have a *lot* of Jewish readers seeking out musical advent calendars…)

PS – if you really can’t bring yourself to listen to Godspell, here, have the King’s Singers singing ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel‘.  This is very nearly on theme for today, and it’s a little more classical and restrained…

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Advent Calendar Day 8: Vox Clamantis in Deserto

I won’t lie to you – I don’t actually hold an entire library of Advent-appropriate music in my head.  I mean, yes, I’ve certainly sung my fair share and more in this genre, but still.

What I’m saying here is that sometimes what I do is I type an Advent text into Google, get Google to translate it into Latin (or translate it myself into German or French), transcribe the results into YouTube and see what comes out.

And today, what came out was this.

It’s pretty wonderful, isn’t it?  I do love choirs of deeper voices doing gorgeous, lush harmonies, and I love the style – it’s late 15th or early 16th century, so very early in the Renaissance, and it feels as though its still harking back to its medieval roots.  The composer is Bartolomeo Tromboncino, who  was a composer, trombone player (not a zucchini), and, unfortunately, also a pretty unpleasant person.  I mean, murdering your wife and then going to work for Lucrezia Borgia is not what I’d call the hallmark of a stellar character.

Beautiful music, though.

(If you prefer your Renaissance settings of Vox Clamatis without murderers, then allow me to recommend to your attention this setting by Giaches de Wert, which is also very lovely, but feels less exciting to my ear.  Perhaps this is because de Wert was writing right in the middle of the Italian Renaissance, and I know that style of music pretty well?)

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Advent Calendar Day 7: Comfort Ye / Ev’ry Valley – Handel

Well, now, I could hardly have a ‘prepare ye the way of the Lord / make His path straight’ theme and not include Handel, now could I?  I’m pretty sure there is a law about that sort of thing.

The trick with this piece is, of course, that so many people have sung it that it’s really difficult to pick a favourite recording of it.  And I really can’t have Ian Bostridge every year.  Well, I mean, I could, but it seems like cheating…

So this year, I’ve found a rather delightful recording by Kurt Streit.  There are some flaws in the recording (for some reason, it’s squished and compressed, and someone cut a bunch of the accompaniment – why would you DO that?), but there are really none in his performance.  I love the effortlessness with which he sings, and how much joy he brings to the performance – it’s absolutely contagious, and I’d basically follow him anywhere if he sang at me like that.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!

PS – OK, I simply cannot mention Handel’s Messiah without drawing your attention to this completely bonkers production, directed by Claus Guth.  It’s impeccably sung, but the staging is bizarre and includes interpretive dance, a sign language interpreter, and significantly more seductive intent than one usually finds in either ‘He Shall Feed his Flock’ or ‘How Beautiful Are the Feet’.  (And yes, it goes precisely where you think it does in the latter case.)

If you have a couple of hours to spare and have a taste for high-quality Baroque music made completely bizarre, I highly recommend this to your attention.

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Advent Calendar Day 6: Prepare ye the way of the Lord – Wise

I think we’ve milked the Rorate theme as far as we possibly can, so it’s time to move on to our next Advent theme (which probably should have been my first theme, only I got my Advent texts mixed up…), which is all about preparing the way of the Lord.  Because let’s face it – you really can’t have Advent without some serious time spent on Isaiah 40:

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

There are several really obvious possibilities here, and I promise, you’ll be getting them all in good time, but I wanted to start with this slightly less-well-known anthem by Michael Wise, who was an English organist and composer born just after the English Civil War. He wrote several really gorgeous verse anthems, which are one of my favourite forms of music, because they combine choral sections, solos and duets or small ensemble pieces into one piece of music.

(I also like them because they usually feature the alto pretty heavily; the Puritans didn’t approve of church music, and it took a while after the Restoration for cathedrals to train up a new set of really good boy sopranos.  Verse anthems were a good solution, because you could give the tricky bits to the adult tenors, basses and counter tenors, and just bring the boys in for the chorus.  Having said that… Wise was clearly writing for boy sopranos who knew their stuff, so presumably he just liked the form.)

I have not been able to find what I view as a perfect recording, but this one is pretty lovely.  I love the way Wise mixes and matches his voices in this piece.  But I think my favourite part is the bass solo in the ‘every valley section’, with its brilliant low notes.  The duet about all flesh being grass, and the chorus which follows, is also pretty amazing, though I’m less keen on the boy sopranos’ voices than I am on that of the bass.