Tag Archives: advent

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Advent Calendar Day 20: Magnificat (Telemann / Ensemble Planeta)

I seem to come back to this one every year, but there’s something compelling about the combination of the Book of Hours illustrations and the almost ethereal sound of the Ensemble Planeta’s voices.  And I do love the way they sing all the accompaniment bits in bell-like voices.

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

The Magnificat is Mary’s song from the Gospel of Luke when she is told by the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and give birth to the Son of God.  The full lyrics and translation can be found here, but the Magnificat takes its name from the first line ‘Magnificat anima mea Dominum’ (My soul shall magnify the Lord).

I honestly do not know *what* lyrics the Ensemble Planeta are singing here.  I can tell you that they are riffing on Telemann’s German Magnificat (which you can here some of here), but they definitely are not singing in German, and the few words I can pick out sound more like Italian than anything else.  They definitely are not singing the Latin words.  It’s a mystery.  But it’s also very beautiful, so I can live with it quite happily.

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Advent Calendar Day 19: The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came (Trad. Basque)

Today’s carol is a very special one, because it is sung by a very dear friend of mine, Shakira Searle, with whom I used to sing regularly before she and her partner moved to Portland, Oregon.  After that, singing regularly became a bit more of a challenging.  But we still sing together in spirit, because she has a regular series of gigs at The Grotto, which is a Catholic shrine and sanctuary in Portland that sounds absolutely gorgeous, not least because of all the singing they have there during their Festival of Lights in December.  And meanwhile, I, too, am singing carols and Catholic music at every possible opportunity during December, so we may be singing at different times, but we are definitely singing from the same songbook!

Given that I’m doing a bit of an Annunciation series this week, it was irresistible to use Shakira’s recording of ‘Gabriel’s Message’ (also known as ‘The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came’), recorded at the Grotto last year.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q1-X8dIKLM&w=560&h=315]

Isn’t she gorgeous?  I really do miss singing with her.  I’ve always loved this carol, which I first encountered in primary school (where we invariably sang ‘most highly flavoured lady’, and thought this was *hilarious*), and there are some very lovely harmonised versions of it around too (this one, by All Angels, is another favourite of mine).  But I can’t help suspecting it would sound even better if one was listening to it in a candle-lit garden.  If you are anywhere near Portland, I would certainly recommend this festival to your attention.

On another note, I can’t express how strange it is to see someone I have carolled with regularly performing a Christmas carol all rugged up in a woolly jumper.  I know, of course, that everyone else in the world gets Christmas in winter (and it isn’t as though Melbourne Christmases are reliably hot, either), and I’m quite used to seeing other people carolling in heavy coats, but I feel a real sense of cognitive dissonance seeing Shakira carolling in what is obviously the middle of winter!

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Advent Calendar Day 18: Dixit Maria (Hassler)

I was going to do Ne Timeas Maria for today’s carol, since I’m in a bit of an Annunciation frame of mind this week, but then I finished the novel I was reading and felt moved to go on an extended rant about sexist assumptions and lazy authorial choices which I *could not do* because Andrew hasn’t finished the series yet, and after all that, I decided I wanted an Annunciation text in which Mary got a bit more agency.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd7s40s-Ltw&w=560&h=315]

And I mean, yes, she is saying ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord, be it with me as you have said’, but at least she is speaking for herself and consenting, rather than just having things told to her by the Angel Gabriel (who is, I’m sure, a perfectly good Angel with modern views on gender equity, but today he is also the patriarchy, so I’m afraid he is out of luck).

I have no idea where I am going with this.  If I’m honest, I’ll admit that the Victoria is a better piece of music.  But the Hassler is cheery and surprisingly challenging to sing, and most of all it doesn’t make me cranky, and some days, that’s just the best you can do.

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Advent Calendar Day 17: Rejoice Greatly (Handel)

I know, I know, I’m really milking this Rejoice business now, aren’t I?  But you see, I went looking for a Magnificat, and then fell down an internet rabbit hole and found myself listening to Patricia Petibon singing Der Hölle Rache, as well as a whole lot of other entirely un-Adventy things, because she is an utterly addictive singer to watch, and then I remembered seeing a recording of a very young Patricia Petibon (with dark hair!) singing Rejoice Greatly, and *clearly* that had to be the next thing I posted here, because it’s gorgeous.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EWsgdS-p4g&w=420&h=315]

I love this aria, and I just adore the way Petibon sings it – she is so very expressive, with those huge eyes and wild hair, and I do find it hilarious when she goes all sopranolicious on those cadenzas.  I didn’t think that baroque ornaments normally went into the stratosphere like that, but that’s not going to stop her, and nor should it, because she sounds amazing.

Honestly, I can’t think of anything to add to this, except that you really should go and find more videos of Patricia Petibon singing.  I love her CDs – her choice of music is superb and diverse – but really, watching her sing is something else again.

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Advent Calendar Day 16: Gaudete!

Sometimes, I like to be a really evil choirmistress, and last Wednesday was one of those times.  With our first performance on Thursday, I grinned evilly at my little work choir and suggested we give Gaudete – a piece we had never previously looked at – a try.  It was, predictably, a disaster, mostly because the Latin goes by terribly fast, so that even if you get the hang of the tune (which my choristers did, quite fast), the verses are a shambles.  So I laughed at them and said maybe we’d give that one a try next year, and then we went back to singing stuff we had actually rehearsed.  And singing it very well, too.

(I don’t know why they put up with me, really I don’t.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSxg9Ij5r8&w=560&h=315]

Anyway.  This little carol is one I first encountered in an Adelaide pub back in my university choir days.  It lends itself very nicely to pub singing, because it has a pleasingly bouncy chorus, and the verses – generally sung by a soloist – are a nice little rhyming iambic heptameter, which means that anyone can jump in for a verse and sing just about any humorous or scurrilis couplet they can make up.  “Mary had a little lamb, the doctors were surprised / When Old MacDonald had a farm they couldn’t believe their eyes!” was one of the cleaner verses we liked to sing.  Some of the less clean verses were known to get us kicked out of the pub.

If, however, one chooses to sing the actual lyrics as written – which really doesn’t come naturally to me, even twenty years later – one finds that actually, they are a Christmas carol.  Fancy that.  The chorus, in fact, translates as ‘Rejoice, Christ is born of the Virgin Mary, Rejoice’, which perhaps explains why the Mary had a little lamb verses were such a popular variant.

The King’s Singers version is, of course, on an entirely different plane from that of the pub version.  For one thing, they vary the keys and harmonies in different verses.  For another, they sing the lyrics as written.  And for a third thing, they sing so beautifully that they probably wouldn’t get kicked out of the pub even if they were singing the dirty words.

(That’s how things work when you are that beautiful.)

And – did you notice? – we also get to continue the theme of Rejoicing for the third Sunday of Advent.  See, I do pay attention sometimes…

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Advent Calendar Day 15: Rejoice in the Lord Alway (Henry Purcell)

The third Sunday of Advent is also called ‘Gaudete Sunday’ (Gaudete meaning ‘rejoice’ in Latin).  After having candles, altar cloths and vestments of purple for weeks on end, suddenly we break out the pink – tastefully, via a single candle in the case of the more protestant churches, or with rose-coloured exuberance in the case of your more Catholic churches.  One of the churches I sing at used to drape their life-sized cross with purple satin throughout Advent, and then fling a bright swathe of fuchsia cloth of gold across the satin for what, it must be confessed, was our absolutely favourite time of the year to sing there.  The monks wear embroidered pink vestments, too.  Very fetching.

But I digress.

This being the Sunday for rejoicing, I naturally turn to Purcell, because there is nothing more joyous than singing one of his anthems, unless it is singing one of his arias.  He is truly a joy to sing.  And this anthem – also called the Bell Anthem, because of the bell-like accompaniment – is one which is frequently chosen for Gaudete Sunday, for reasons which are probably obvious.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_-1lp0RgZQ]

There is so much to love in this piece of music.  I love the bell-like strings at the start and in between the choral sections, the dance-like rhythm of the main melody, and that absolutely thrilling part when the whole choir comes in like a heavenly host for the chorus.  And then the beautiful stillness of ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’.  Such beautiful writing, and such a perfect piece of music, combining rejoicing and reflection – exactly right for this Sunday in Advent.

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Advent Calendar Day 14: Remember, O Thou Man (Ravenscroft)

This carol holds a special place in my carol-infested heart, because it’s one of the first carols I sang at Wesley, and also because learning to sing this was, I think, the first time I ever heard the term ‘Advent carol’.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDN5gUgF_OQ&w=560&h=315]

Also, I am just silly enough to enjoy the rather brilliant line ‘Remember how thou art dead I gone, and I did what I can…’, which in my head is always followed immediately by ‘but you wouldn’t listen, would you? No, you just had to know better, and now you come crying to me…’

This is probably not quite what Thomas Ravenscroft had in mind.

Musically, I love this piece for its haunting melody and the harmonies which change from minor to major at the end of each verse.  And the voices in this particular rendition are just lovely. I’ll have to keep an eye out for The Sixteen in future.

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Advent Calendar Day 13: The Crown of Roses (Tchaikovsky)

From one rose to another, and this is a very suitable rose for a Friday, since this carol for Advent has a bit of a Good Fridayish tinge to it.

I first sang this in a school choir in Grade 6 or so, which means that it is embedded in my memory for life.    Though I always thought it was for Easter until I kept on finding it in Christmas Carol anthologies.  Then again, Lent and Advent have a similar (purple!) tinge, to my mind.  (I also can’t help thinking whenever I hear this at Christmas that *of course* it’s a Russian composer who thinks about Christmas and goes straight to the crown of thorns imagery.)

I particularly want to mention the choir in this recording, because their sound is really fantastic – very rich, and perfect for the lushness of Tchaikovsky’s harmonies. The choir of King’s College Cambridge is always excellent, but I think this particular recording is outstanding even for them. And the tenor section is in particularly beautiful voice.

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Advent Calendar Day 12: Det är en ros utsprungen (Sandström)

I was looking for a good recording of the beautiful old German carol, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, when I found this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF0vJDN1ek8&w=560&h=315]

It’s sort of the same carol, if you slowed it right down and made it strange and reflective and echoey and much more haunting and wistful.

Looking at Jan Sandström’s biography, he is apparently a contemporary composer – born in 1954, in fact – from Sweden, and his compositions include the Motorbike Concerto for trombone and orchestra.  Already, that sounds promising.  In fact, that sounds so promising, I had to go and find a recording of it, and because I love you, I am going to share it.  Here you go.  Don’t you feel better for listening to it?  It really does sound very motorbikish.  I’m not sure how much it sounds like a concerto, but I am 100% sure that Andrew, at least, is going to love this.

Anyway, it’s pretty clear that Sandström’s specialty is writing music that sounds like a picture of what he is writing.  (I keep on wanting to call it music that is like a soundtrack, or sound effect, because to me that’s what it reminds me of, but this sounds as though I’m being dismissive, which really isn’t my intention)

Back to the carol, what you probably really want to know is that this composition was based on the version by Praetorius, written in the late 16th or early 17th century.  If you want to know how the carol usually sounds, here’s a rather lovely recording by the Cambridge Singers, directed by John Rutter, no less, which should give you the idea…

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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.