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?)