Tag Archives: Quire Cleveland

by

Advent Calendar Day 16 – In the Bleak Midwinter (Darke *and* Holst)

Another slightly better-known carol, this one with lyrics by Christina Rosetti, who certainly never intended for it to be sung, since it scans differently in every verse. I love this carol for the words, which I find very evocative – of, as it happens, entirely the wrong season for us. This sort of carol reminds me of the Christmas we spent in England when I was a child – though less the Christmas, which was in London, and more the months leading up to it which were spent living at York University, in very storybook English surrounds – icy ponds, stepping stones, red squirrels, proper autumn trees and conkers and medieval and roman ruins. I still love York and undoubtedly view it through the rose-tinted glasses of someone who hasn’t been there for about 17 years, and these words and the clearness of the song remind me of it.

This is not the arrangement which I know well, and which we are singing on Sunday (that would be the Holst arrangement) and which I know better, nor is it the arrangement that I heard sung once when I was at school and am clearly never going to find because I have no idea who the composer was and YouTube just keeps offering me Holst and Darke. I can never decide whether I like this arrangement more than the other, but in the end, I loved the singing of this one, and the soprano and then tenor solo.

Also, the Darke arrangement is really strange if you are are accustomed to Holst – it’s similar enough that it *almost* sounds like it might be a harmony or descant to it (it isn’t – I’ve tried singing one over the other, and they don’t quite work. But it’s very close).

And now I’ve just realised that Darke skips my favourite verse, which is the one about angels and archangels worshiping Jesus night and day while, Mary worships her son with a kiss. There’s a lovely domesticity and humanity about it which I love.  So you are going to have to have *both* versions, even though I don’t really love the singing on the second one, and I’m going to give you the lyrics too, and then you can decide which you like best.

I think I love all of them.

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

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE0aIQp9V4s&w=560&h=315]

Edited to add: Chanticleer did a magnificent arrangement of the Holst, which is too good not to include, but not at all traditional.  And they skipped the breastful of milk verse, which is also not acceptable.  You have to sing all the verses, people!

Lyrics:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.