The choral repertoire of Christmas music owes a debt to Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). In our own parish, we often sing “O little town of Bethlehem” to the tune FOREST GREEN, one of many folk tunes that Vaughan Williams adapted for use in the 1906 edition of The English Hymnal (read the whole story of that project here). Choir of the Queen’s College, Oxford; Owen Rees, conductor In 1912, after Vaughan Williams had completed a period of research for the Folk-Song Society and the editing of The English Hymnal, he composed his Fantasia on Christmas Carols, a work for baritone soloist, choir, and orchestra. His engagement with traditional tunes and…
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Christmas Eve
(December 24, 2019)For many years, our Processional hymn on Christmas Eve has been “O come all ye faithful.” During Advent, we have been invoking our Lord to come, and now, as we celebrate his birth we invoke his people to come to worship him. This hymn is so deeply embedded in the lives of many of us that we probably fail to notice some of its formal elements. The Psalter Hymnal Handbook makes this observation: “The text has two unusual features for such a popular hymn: it is unrhymed and has an irregular meter.” The authorship of the text (originally in Latin) was long debated but most scholars believe it was the…
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Marc-Antoine Charpentier
Messe de MinuitComposed in 1694, the Midnight Mass for Christmas by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634-1704) includes tunes from eleven French carols. Conductor John Bawden explains: In England carols were more often sung than played, but in France noëls figured prominently in the substantial French organ repertoire. The liturgy of Midnight Mass permitted the singing and playing of these Christmas folksongs, and by Charpentier’s time quite complex instrumental arrangements were commonplace. However, Charpentier’s idea of basing a whole mass on these songs was completely original. Altogether there are eleven noëls, most of which are dance-like in character, reflecting the carol’s secular origins. In addition to the carol melodies that he adapted to fit various parts of the…
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Arvo Pärt
Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen (1988)For the past week, I’ve been parcelling out the pieces of a work that should be experienced whole, although in performance and on recordings, some of the movements of Arvo Pärt’s Sieben Magnificat Antiphonen are sometimes extracted and presented without the full context. If you missed one or more of the earlier posts, here are links to the pages corresponding to all seven movements: O WeisheitO AdonaiO sproß aus Isais WurzelO Schlüssel DavidsO MorgensternO König aller VölkerO Immanuel Before Christmas arrives, I thought I should make easily available on these pages a performance of the entire work. From the Arvo Pärt Centre’s website, here is the “official” summary of the…
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“O Antiphons,” VII
Arvo Pärt
O ImmanuelThe final O Antiphon in this week before Christmas is O Emmanuel. In invoking the name which affirms “God with us,” the text summarizes the character of the salvation that comes with that divine presence: O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:the hope of the nations and their Saviour:veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.Come and save us, O Lord our God. Arvo Pärt’s setting of this final antiphon is the longest of the seven movements, as it repeats the text three times. The first statement of the texts is a long ascending sequence of chords that builds a sense of…
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“O Antiphons,” VI
Arvo Pärt
O König aller VölkerThe O antiphon for December 22nd reminds us that the coming of Christ into the world is an inescapably political event. It speaks of the coming King of nations as the source of unity, encouraging us to remember that an authentic quest for unity cannot marginalize or relativize the place of Christ as the unifier, as the one in whom all things hold together (Col. 1:17). Deep dissatisfaction with discord should not be understood in merely psychological or sociological terms. It is a recognition (however faint) of the disordering effects of sin and a longing (however inchoate) for redemption, which will have political consequences. O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,O…
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Fourth Sunday in Advent
(December 22, 2019)The Gospel reading for this Sunday is the account in St. John’s Gospel of the encounter between John the Baptist and the priests and Levites from Jerusalem. Rather than asking him what his goals are, they ask him who he is. “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” Our processional hymn — “On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry” — was written in Latin by the French priest and educator Charles Coffin (1676-1749). For a time rector of the University of Paris, Coffin wrote about 100 Latin hymns, in addition to a large amount of Latin poetry. The Hymnal 1940 Companion…
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Dieterich Buxtehude:
Wachet auf, ruft uns die StimmeOn the third Sunday of Advent, our parish sang the hymn, “Wake, awake, for night is flying.” The remarkable text and tune behind this hymn have served as the starting point for a number of compositions that I’ve highlighted in the past week or so. Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Wachet auf, ruf uns die Stimme is the best known of these works. But a much smaller scale cantata by Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) is also worth repeated listenings. Buxtehude’s Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BuxWV 100) is in four short movements: a brief introductory instrumental Sinfonia, with four violins and continuo; Verse 1 of the hymn sung by a soprano…
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“O Antiphons,” V
Arvo Pärt
O MorgensternThe fifth of Arvo Pärt’s settings for the O Antiphons is O Morgenstern, “O Morning Light.” Newer translations of the Latin of this antiphon render it “O Radiant Dawn.” (Members of our parish will recall the choir’s singing of the setting of this antiphon by James MacMillan, which uses this translation.) O Oriens,O Morning Star,splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae:splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. Unlike MacMillan’s setting, which suggests a sudden flash of light, Pärt’s treatment of this invocation of the Light of the world shimmers, it…
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“O Antiphons,” IV
Arvo Pärt
O Schlüssel DavidsThe fourth of the O Antiphons is O clavis David — O Key of David. The image of the Messiah as a key is suggested by a passage in Isaiah 22. Poet Malcolm Guite, who has written a series of sonnets inspired by these seven texts, has commented that “of all the mystic titles of Christ, this is the one that connects most closely with our ‘secular’ psychology. We speak of the need on the one hand for ‘closure’ and on the other for ‘unlocking’, for ‘opening’, for ‘liberation’.” O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel;O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;qui aperis, et nemo claudit;you…