Last year, 33,000 people voted for their favorite Christmas songs on British radio station Classic FM’s annual poll. The winner was “Silent Night” with “O Holy Night” taking second place. On American site Ranker, “White Christmas” takes the prize with “Silent Night” in second place. While these songs are undoubtedly beautiful and perennial favorites, it occurred to me as I looked over my Christmas song collection that out of nearly 250 songs, I had 192 different titles, and many of them relatively obscure.
I have been interested in the origins of Christmas songs and
carols for almost as long as I can remember, looking with interest at the date
and composer of songs published in children’s books with lyrics for
singing. With several centuries of
tradition, it seems miserly to focus on tunes of the last two hundred
years. I would like to highlight here
some of the lesser-known Yuletide songs and their stories.
I applaud the website Hymns and Carols of Christmas which
provides not only a wealth of information but keeps the spirit of Christmas all
year round.
Arcangelo
Corelli is remembered as “Founder of Modern Violin Technique,” the “World's
First Great Violinist,” and the “Father of the Concerto Grosso.” However, he is probably not known very well
outside of reasonably au fait classical musical listeners. BaroqueMusic.org claims
that Corelli would have been as well-known for his violin in the 17th
century as Paganini was in the 19th, but that he was not a virtuoso
in the modern sense. We are more
concerned here, naturally, with his composing technique. He popularized the Concerto Grosso and made
it as integral to music as the symphony became in the classical period. He wrote comparatively few compositions but
all were popular, and he labored hardest on Opus 6, which was not finished in
his lifetime. As a teacher, he
influenced a whole generation including Vivaldi. There actually is not a great deal of
biographical information available on Corelli; however, his composition
definitely speaks for itself. What is
the Christmas connection, you might ask?
In the notes, the composer wrote “Fatto
per la note di Natale,” i.e. written for Christmas Eve.
What
is beautiful about Corelli’s composition are the varying moods. The Adagio is contemplative and
soulful—indeed, you could almost describe it as melancholy or wistful. The first time I ever heard this piece of
music, it was not associated with Christmas and was part of the soundtrack of
the Peter Weir film Master and
Commander. The film is important to
me as it introduced me to Patrick O’Brian’s book series which is the best
historical fiction ever written, and to several beautiful pieces of baroque
music such as Corelli’s Adagio from the Concerto
Grosso. The scene for which this
piece is the accompaniment was the incredibly sad moment when Dr Stephen
Maturin (Paul Bettany), having been accidentally wounded, is brought on a
stretcher to the Galapagos Islands by his concerned friend Captain Jack Aubrey
(Russell Crowe). Although (spoilers) he
survives the surgery, I thought in the context of the film that he had been
brought to the islands to die. Thus,
that movement will always be tinged with unwonted sadness and poignancy for
me. I can imagine, though, that Corelli
wanted to compose something reflective, as, with much in Christian tradition of
centuries past, the joyousness of the
Nativity is colored by the knowledge of Calvary to come. Listening to the Adagio reminds me to be
still and reflect on the mystery of Christmas with meditation and focus.
Very
different, indeed, is the Pastorale Movement.
Oddly enough, once again I had to rely on another medium to introduce me
to this joyful and exquisite piece. It
has featured in years’ worth of Jacquie Lawson computer Advent calendars and
though I had often heard it and enjoyed it, it wasn’t until I heard the full Concerto Grosso on YouTube that I recognized
its provenance. Although its tempo is
slow, the Pastorale is delightful and full of good feeling.
This
is my favorite rendition of the Christmas
Concerto on YouTube, it’s beautifully played and beautifully filmed. It is interesting to see the faces of the
performers as they interpret the soulfulness of this composition.
The beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written
during the American Civil War in 1863, has been set to various pieces of music,
something I did not realize until I came to research the Advent
Calendar in 2011. The poem reminds
us that while many Christmas songs have been composed with the abstract (or
even the flippant[1])
in mind, some have concrete and sometimes poignant backgrounds. Longfellow, one of the most iconic American
poets of the 19th century, wrote this poem after his son Charley was
wounded in Virginia in December 1863.
You can read more about his story here.
In 1872, John Baptiste Calkin arranged a shorter version of
the poem “Christmas Bells” with the verses about the Civil War removed, and
provided music, which he published in 1912.
There are at least three other tunes which have been assigned to this
poem. This is the version I heard
first.
Here is another version about which I can find little
information. But I like the tune.
A more recent arrangement was made by Christian rock/pop
group Casting Crowns’ frontman Mark Hall and Dale Oliver.
More than ever, we need to heed its message and try to take
some comfort from it:
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"
Like “The Twelve Days of
Christmas,” there is a real sense of satisfaction at having got to the end of
this carol; it really feels like climbing up toward something important! The words and music of this carol are
traditional English and it is probably medieval; one version was collected by
Mrs Milligan Fox and recorded by Richard Runciman Terry in Two Hundred Folk Carols (1933).
Here is a version of that
traditional tune, though personally I think it was best interpreted by the Pro
Arte Singers with music arranged by Joshua V. Himes. (Buy their album. Buy it now!)
There is another version,
called “The Seven Blessings of Mary,” collected by John Jacob Niles in
Appalachia, coincidentally also in 1933.
This is quite different from the traditional English version.
As noted by Erik Routley in The English Carol (1961), the so-called
“primitive” versions in the medieval manuscripts have five joys:
The Nativity
The Crucifixion
The
Resurrection
The
Ascension
The
Assumption
The
sevenfold pattern of joys or miracles in the familiar version:
The Nativity
Making the
lame to walk
Making the
blind to see
Preaching
Raising the
dead to life
Crucifixion
Resurrection
The version
with twelve may date to the mid-17th century.
Loreena McKennitt sings the
lyrics of “The Seven Rejoices of Mary” to a different tune which much resembles
that from the Irish folk song “The Star of the County Down.” This tune, according to Routley, is heard
“everywhere,” was recorded at multiple places in England such as Weobley, Lew
Trenchard, Kingsfold, Scotland, and appears three times under different titles
in English County Songs.
One
of the best Christmas album purchases I ever made was Christmas Center Stage by the San Francisco cast of Phantom of the Opera. Although some might argue the
instrumentation is basic—a piano—it’s a wonderfully interpreted album with
plenty of variety, from “Merry Christmas, Darling” and “White Christmas” (with
the original opening from Holiday Inn intact)
to this musical setting of Clement Moore’s famous poem. (In fact, I blogged about it here
previously.) I didn’t think much about where
the music came from; it just seemed a nice piece for multiple voices.
Flash
forward several years: This was solved for me when I was carrying out my
listening for a previous guest
blog. Writing the blog got me
started on my odyssey to listen and catalogue Christmas-themed audio drama, and
I heard the piece once again in “Fibber Paints the Christmas Tree White,” an
episode of Johnson Wax/Fibber McGee and
Molly (NBC, 18 December 1945).
Like
Burns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly (written by Don Quinn, sponsored
sometimes quite outrageously by Johnson Wax, and played by Jim and Marian
Jordan) were a fixture of Depression-era humor.
The real-life married couple started in radio in the late 1920s. They were Irish-American Catholics, but as
you can hear, this is an entirely secular program. It took me awhile to get into the show, but
Fibber’s hapless but well-meaning character won me over at last. This story is
one of several from 1945 that address the short-lived craze for white flocked
trees. Evidently, though, the song featured
in several episodes of the radio comedy program and was composed by Ken Darby
c. 1941. It was performed by the King's
Men and arranged by Harry Simeone and performed by the Billy Mills Orchestra
featuring the King's Men.
You
can hear it here:
Here
is another version on early television by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians
from 1951 (it’s a bit strange):
This must surely rank as one of the most exquisite Christmas
carols ever written. Its unaccompanied
sound lends an ancient feel to it while the harmonies suggest a modern
composition style. The text hails from Divine Hymns or Spiritual Songs,
compiled by Joshua Smith in New Hampshire in 1784 (though it was apparently
first printed in London in 1761 and signed by one "R. H."). The music is a different story altogether,
having been composed by Elizabeth Poston in the twentieth century. Poston was a talented composer who wrote a
variety of music, including scores for television and radio.
The conceit of the lyrics compares Jesus Christ to an apple
tree, with some Biblical precedent, though others have speculated it is an
attempt to Christianize the pagan ritual of Wassailing the apple orchards,
popular in the West
Country. In any case, it’s beautiful
imagery.
Here is a lovely version:
Written
probably by Jean de Brébeuf in the early 1640s (I have seen three dates proposed),
a Jesuit missionary, at the Sainte-Marie Huron community, with the original
words in the Huron language, the best-known English translation was made in
1926 by Jesse Edgar Middleton. The tune
is a French melody, “La Jeune Pucelle,” but as the song went unrecorded for 100
years, it’s impossible to know if this was the original tune. The carol was collected from the Hurons by
Father de Villeneuve, a Jesuit stationed 1747-94 at Lorette, Quebec. Brébeuf was certainly the author of the first
Huron catechism and a French/Huron dictionary. He was killed by Iroquois and
the mission destroyed in 1649, and Brébeuf has since taken on legendary
status. The song endured, was translated
into French by Paul Picard (Paul Tsaenhohi, son of the famous Huron leader Point
of Day). Father Paul Lejeune wrote in
1634, “The Indians are great singers, they sing like the great majority of
nations on Earth for pleasure and for worship; that is to say with them during
their pagan beliefs . . . they use few words when singing, using tonal
variation and not varying the words. . . They say that we imitate the cries of
birds in our tunes” (somewhat freely translated by myself, I must say).
While
it is an official Canadian carol and remains a common Christmas hymn in
Canadian churches of many Christian denominations, I think outside of Canada it
is not particularly well-known (except perhaps in music education where the
modest range makes it easy for students to play and sing); in any case, it is
not particularly frequently recorded or broadcast on conventional pop radio.
The
opening lines in English go,
“
'Twas in the moon of winter-time
When
all the birds had fled . . .,”
making
obvious that the carol uses a number of concepts familiar to Algonquin
peoples. Among the Iroquois,
specifically the Seneca, the Midwinter Festival took place five days after the
new moon following the zenith of the Pleiades.
On the first day there was the “Boiling of the Babies,” the public
naming of babies who had been born since the Green Corn Ceremony. The corn soup was boiled to be eaten the
following day. New Year officially began
at dawn on the next day. Late December
was known to the Lakota as “The Moon of Popping Trees,” when it was so cold
twigs would snap in the cold.
Here
is a version of “ ‘Twas in the Moon in Wintertime” in English:
Here
performed in several languages:
“Still,
Still, Still” is a traditional Austrian melody which, as you can imagine from
the title, is a lullaby. The words were
first printed in 1865 in a folk song collection. The Salzburg melody dates from
1819. I’m afraid there isn’t much more I
was able to dig up on it.
Here
is a version in the original German:
Not
to be confused with this version, collected by J. M. Lowrie, in The Silver Song, by William A. Ogden and
music from William Augustine Ogden (Toledo, Ohio: W. W. Whitney, 1870).
I
first heard this haunting carol on Anonymous 4’s album The Cherry Tree Carol. It
has also been recorded by the Rose
Ensemble who cite The Southern
Harmony (1854) as its source. Not
surprisingly, Anonymous 4’s version is more Early Music in approach and the
Rose Ensemble is more “southern harmony hymn.”
Both versions are beautiful.
Here
is yet another interpretation with guitar with clear links to the southern
harmony hymn.
Stan Freberg
As this is “lesser-known sonic gems,” you can’t have Christmas (I’ve learned in the last year) without a liberal sprinkling of Stan Freberg. Freberg (b. 1926) was a maverick, who reportedly entered the world of making commercials on radio and TV because he found most adverts moronic. He injected everything he did with satire. Evidently he was even an influence on the Beatles, according to Paul McCartney. He didn’t impress everyone—while elected to the Radio Hall of Fame, he was never elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame. He is a bit of a hero to us radio folks as he loved the medium and served it well. By the way, it’s his voice you hear as the beaver in Lady and the Tramp (1955).
As this is “lesser-known sonic gems,” you can’t have Christmas (I’ve learned in the last year) without a liberal sprinkling of Stan Freberg. Freberg (b. 1926) was a maverick, who reportedly entered the world of making commercials on radio and TV because he found most adverts moronic. He injected everything he did with satire. Evidently he was even an influence on the Beatles, according to Paul McCartney. He didn’t impress everyone—while elected to the Radio Hall of Fame, he was never elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame. He is a bit of a hero to us radio folks as he loved the medium and served it well. By the way, it’s his voice you hear as the beaver in Lady and the Tramp (1955).
This
is great—though better if you know Dragnet.
Wow,
they even animated it!
Greed is never welcome at Christmas:
A traditional French carol from the 15th century,
numerous versions exist of this New Year’s Carol. Keyte and Parrott took their version from the
1721 Grande Bible des noels, tant vieux
que nouveaus. Translations were made
into English as early as the 17th and 18th
centuries. The tune, as Hymns and Carols
of Christmas notes, echoes in its first five notes the Maris Stella Lucens Miseris.
Here is Loreena McKennitt performing her excellent
interpretation.
Here is a more traditional version.
***
Please
be adventurous in your Christmas song listening and discover a tune you may not
have heard before. There are hundreds of
them!
Wishing
you peace this holiday season.
