{"id":797,"date":"2011-12-02T07:53:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T20:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catesings.org\/?p=797"},"modified":"2011-12-02T07:53:49","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T20:53:49","slug":"advent-calendar-day-2-magnificat-purcell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/2011\/12\/02\/advent-calendar-day-2-magnificat-purcell\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Calendar Day 2 &#8211; Magnificat (Purcell)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">I was trying to find a version of Purcell&#8217;s &#8216;Thy Word is a Lantern&#8217; for today, but given a choice of excessively mannered male alto * or pleasing but very quiet female alto with lots of background rustling, I was less than inspired (I&#8217;m not sure why this particular search string also brought me up the Alto&#8217;s Lament, but that is a question for another day).<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Fortunately, it also brought up this gorgeous verse anthem by Purcell, which is ever so much more appropriate for Advent anyway, being as it is a Magnificat.\u00a0This is Mary&#8217;s song\u00a0early in the book of Luke, after the Angel tells her that she will conceive and bear a son and all that. I believe I&#8217;ve expressed the opinion before that Advent is All About Mary, and we might as well start early on this one.\u00a0You&#8217;ll be seeing a lot more Magnificats around here before Advent is over.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">I&#8217;ve never actually heard this piece before, but already I want to sing it \u2013 I have a weakness for verse anthems (anthems which alternate between a soloist or group of soloists and the full choir) and particularly love the way Purcell alternates between full choir and trios composed of lower and then upper voices.\u00a0I strongly suspect that this is an all-male choir, and I do wish it wasn\u2019t, but it is a very good one for all that.<\/p>\n<p>And you really can&#8217;t ever go wrong with Purcell (despite the evidence beside the asterisk below).<\/p>\n<p>No embedding for this video &#8211; hie thee to YouTube and watch it there!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/KoEn-e2zKzU\">Magnificat, composed by Henry Purcell, and sung by the choir of Christ College, Oxford<\/a><\/p>\n<p>* seriously, I was waiting for him to start singing the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7opLzuC73sI&amp;feature=related\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">No Kissing At All<\/a>\u00a0song. That&#8217;s how mannered he was. And yes, he was really that camp.<\/p>\n<p><em>Edited to add: In fact, I did get to sing this at Christ Church Brunswick, a few years later, and I couldn&#8217;t figure out why it seemed so familiar &#8211; now I know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was trying to find a version of Purcell&#8217;s &#8216;Thy Word is a Lantern&#8217; for today, but given a choice of excessively mannered male alto * or pleasing but very quiet female alto with lots of background rustling, I was less than inspired (I&#8217;m not sure why this particular search string also brought me up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,113,312,462,558],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent-calendar","tag-choir-of-christ-college","tag-henry-purcell","tag-magnificat","tag-oxford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}