A Carol for Christmas VII - The Innocents

More years ago than I care to remember I was part of a group performing the "Nativity" from the Coventry Mysteries at St Thomas Huron Street in Toronto.  In the spirit of the original we performed the pageants on stages set up around the church and the audience followed from stage to stage.  The plays had been freely adapted by our director Don Mcgill - whose voice was known to anyone who listened to CBC radio in the 1960-70s - but keeping a good deal of the language of the original at times it was almost like performing in a foreign tongue.  To this day I remember that "mickle" is Middle English for "great".  And I had a role in the pageants involving Mickle Herod - Herod the Great, his interview with the Magi and the Slaughter of the Innocents.

This Slaughter of the Innocents is one of the
Rotterdam Bible tiles adorning the walls of the
kitchen at Wachau Castle in Saxony.

My dear friend Jim was a big man - well over six feet five and stocky - and he got the "big" role of Herod and I - smaller and, in those days, slimer - was his snivelling, groveling clerk.  Herod was of course the "bad Jew" - and was always dressed in black and gold with flaming red hair, red side-locks, a large hook nose and a bombastic bellow meant to elicit laughter from the crowd.  In those first performances he would probably have been the butt of catcalls, heckling and perhaps even the odd piece of rotten fruit. That half-comic, half-villainous Herod of the Mysteries was to greatly influence the portrayal of Jews in both Marlowe and Shakespeare.  Until Edmund Kean's sympathetic Shylock in 1814, perhaps the most famous Jewish character in English literature had been played as a repulsive and evil clown.  It has been suggested that the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech would have been greeted with great laughter in Shakespeare's time.

The face of Herod is created by the bodies of
 the innocents he is said to have slaughter in this
grotesque painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck

In our version Don had Jim ignore Hamlet's advise to the players that they must not "out-Herod Herod".  A great bellowing figure in black with a flame red beard and side-locks wielding a gigantic scimitar he chased me - cringing, whinging and dodging - around in a knockabout routine - sort of the Frick and Frack of Middle England. 

Being St Thomas music was very much a part of the performance as it would have been during the Middle Ages.  As I noted earlier many carols were meant to accompany these pageants and were sung - and perhaps even danced - as interludes as the wagons moved from place to place.  Though the Coventry Carol did not appear in written form until the early 1500s it is quite possible it was written earlier as musical accompaniment for the Slaughter of the Innocents in the Cycle of Mysteries that had been presented by the the Shearmen and Tailors' Guild at Coventry beginning in 1392.

There are many versions available but I find this one by the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers has a particularly lovely blending of voices.

Though there is a great deal of ambiguity in the lyrics - the only know copy of the original text was burned in 1875 and it has come down to us in two very bad transcription - it is both a lullaby and a lament.  A mother - perhaps the Virgin herself - rocks her child and sees in its future a sad ending.

Historically this is some doubt about the events as described in St Mathew's Gospel - there is no historical record of such a massacre.  It is recorded that Herod had his own young sons put to death to secure his throne.  Perhaps Mathew expanded on this event as a link to the prophecy of Jeremiah concerning the coming of the Messiah: A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and greet mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.   And perhaps that is what we are really hearing in this simple but beautiful carol - Rachel weeping for her own and all children lost to violence.

28 dicembre/December - Strege degli Santi Innocenti

A Carol for Christmas VI - Silent Night 1914

The most famous story about, perhaps the most popular of Christmas carols, "Silent Night" involves a broken organ in the Nikolaus-Kirche in Oberndorf in 1818.  Legend says that Joseph Mohr brought the lyrics to Franz Gruber and asked for a melody that he could play on his guitar.  Whither that is fact or legend is a small point - it is a carol that has been recorded by artists as varied in musical genre as Mahalia Jackson, Kathleen, Battle,  Luciano Pavarotti and Annie Lennox and translated into at least 40 different languages.

It is this universality that led to one of the strangest episodes of the First Great War: the Christmas truces of 1914.  Those unexpected episodes leading up to Christmas of that year when British, German and to some small extent French troops left their trenches and met in New Man's Land.  For a brief time in that bloody conflict men exchanged greetings, cigarettes, played football and it is said sang carols together - the one carol each knew, in their own language, was Silent Night.

I've chosen not one of the many versions of this beloved carol that is on YouTube but a song that commemorates that fragile and brief peace.  It appears that Cormac MacConnell who wrote the song may have altered the year but captures the spirit of those amazing moments; and Jerry Lynch brings a sincere beauty to even the sad brutality of the last verse.

And this is for all my dear friends and all those serving overseas - may there soon be a peace that will bring you home to your families and loved ones so there is never again a need for a Christmas truce.


24 dicembre/December - La Vigilia di Natale

A Carol for Christmas V - For Dolly

On Christmas morning 1745 Dorothy Byrom received a special gift. Though he had several children little Dolly was John Byrom’s particular favourite and he had promised her that he would write something just for her to celebrate the Feast Day. Amongst the presents waiting for her that morning Dolly found an envelope and an excited little girl opened it before anything else. To her delight it was a poem bearing the heading Christmas Day for Dolly. We know it better by its first line: Christians Awake, Salute the Happy Morn.

John Byrom's original text of "Christians awake, salute the happy morn"
which little Dolly found amongst her Christmas gifts on that morning in 1745.

It was to be published the following year in Harrop's Manchester Mercury and was set to music in 1750 by John Wainwright. Little is known about the composer – he was organist at the Collegiate Church in Manchester and in 1766 published a collection of Hymns, Psalms and Chants. 
Somewhere in my collection I have a recording of this joyous carol by The Huddersfield Choral Society – arguably the premiere amateur choir in the British Isles – and again was hoping to find them on YouTube. Unfortunately their full-throated – is there anything quite like an English choir in full voice? – rendition was not there but I did find an equally delightful if smaller scaled version.

This quartet of well-known British singers recorded it in 1948 for Victor.  Regarded as one of the great English oratorio singers of the 20th century Isobel Baillie was a petit Scottish soprano with a silvery voice. She is joined by Gladys Ripley, a well-respect contralto who was a great favourite of Sir Adrian Boult, tenor John McHugh and Australian baritone Harold Williams.   Perhaps this is the way it was sung in the Byrom great room and many other homes on Christmas mornings after Wainwright had set it to music.

23 dicembre/December - San Giovanni da Kety

A Carol for Christmas IV - Advent

As we sat at our cappuccino frappes in the trendy café at the Colonnade on Bloor St back in the early 70s my friend John peered over his black forest cake – keep in mind it was the 70s – and demanded to know why they were playing Christmas carols when it was only December 15^th. He summoned a rather perplexed waiter and asked for an explanation as to why we were not hearing Advent carols. The poor waiter, and I must admit I until that time, had never heard of Advent carols. But as I quickly found out carols were meant for any festive occasion and though it was a minor penitential season in the church calendar indeed carols had been written to be sung in sacred and secular settings.

I was first introduced to the Advent carol "Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending" on a recording by Maddy Prior that Bob Kerr often played on the lead up to Christmas. In her rendition Maddy follows John Wesley’s admonition to “sing lustily and with great courage” and brought out the dance-like qualities of the melody. There seems to be some discussion as to the origins of Helmsley, the most popular - and possibly original - tune setting with some suggestion it may have come from a folk opera written by Michael Arne and subsequently arranged by either Thomas Oliver or Martin Madan.  Madan was definitely the author of a revised version of the original text.  Written in 1752 John Cennick's text  had  distinct anti-Semitic overtones and was Evangelical fire and brimstone at its best.  Six years Charles Wesley adapted it and gave it a more hopeful and finally exultant mode. Then  in 1760  Madan made further refinements to the lyrics to bring us to the version most often heard today.  It is also possible at that time that he arranged the music as we most commonly know it.


I had hoped to find Maddy's very individual jig-like rendition on video but failing that there is a beautiful version by the Lichfield Cathedral Choir.  Lichfield is one of the cathedrals in England that is not often on the tourist path which is a shame as these picture reveal that it would be well worth the visit.  I believe the descant arrangement on the final verse is by Ralph Vaughn Williams.

I was reminded of this carol last Sunday when we attended a concert by the choirs of the Basilica of Notre Dame here in Ottawa. I'm sure its Wesleyan authors would have been astounded to hear it sung in a Roman Catholic church. And sung "Lustily and with great courage".

22 dicembre/December - San Demitrio

A Carol for Christmas III - The Watchman's Cry

Before the creation of the unified Metropolitan Police in 1829 the twisting alleyways and dark streets of London were guarded at night by watchmen. In medieval times the watch fell to local householders who, as part of their civic duty, were required to serve a watch, patrolling the streets from 8 or 9 o'clock at night until sunrise. Unpaid and unarmed they were expected to challenge any villainous characters lurking in the boundaries of their parish.  As the city grew so did the problems of urban unrest and the task of patrolling the streets and seeing to the disreputable and unruly fell to a salaried force of watchmen.  The rising merchant class saw an advantage to get a full night's sleep and in paying a small tax to have their homes and boundaries guarded by a paid force.

The Watchmen at St Marylebone prepare for their nightly duties.
The Microcosm of London published 1808-1810.

The watchmen were employed by parish and city councils and armed with little more than their lantern, a staff and their dogs their duty was to apprehend loose women, drunks, armed thugs and, perhaps worse, gentlemen out on a rout and take them to the local watchhouse.  They would then be turned over to the authorities to be seen to and punished - often harshly - for their criminal deeds or unseemly behavior.   The watchmen were often ridiculed in the playhouse and literature  - Shakespeare takes the mickey in Much Ado About Nothing with bumbling Dogberry and his coherts - but still to the average householder the watchman's cry of the clock and assurance that all was well - if indeed it had not disturbed them from their sleep - allowed them to rest easier. 

Though by 1924 the watchman's cry had long disappeared from the streets of London it was to reappear in the carol "Past Three A Clock and A Cold Frosty Morning" in The Cambridge Carol-Book, Being Fifty-Two Songs for Christmas, Easter and Other Seasons, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.  George Ratcliffe Woodward wrote the text and the music was arranged by Charles Wood.  An Anglican clergyman, Woodward was fascinated by old carols and  known for his ability to write verse in a pseudo-Renaissance style and frequently Wood collaborated with him,  adapted his lyrics to old melodies or composed new tunes in the old style.  A teacher at the Royal College of Music Wood counted Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells amongst his students.  His settings of the Anglican mass and various canticles and anthems can still be heard in many churches with traditional choirs in England and Canada.

The refrain that gives the carol its title is based on the actual cry of the watchman and appears as a refrain to a song in Playford's Dancing Master in 1665.  The tune itself is based on an old  melody used by Waites.  Like the watchmen the Waites or town pipers were paid by their local civic or parish council to play on special occasions and to awaken people on dark winter mornings with the shrill sound of their pipes and shawms.    

This version of Woodward and Woods' carol is performed by the Stairwell Carollers, an a cappella choir from here in Ottawa. 

Throughout the year the Stairwell Carollers raise money for local charities with concerts and the sale of CDs.  As the name suggests they specialize in "carols" in the old sense of the word - music for secular and sacred feasts.


18 dicembre/December - San Malachia Profeta

A Carol for Christmas II - Mary's Joy

By the 1870s the Oxford Movement had led to the establishment of Anglo-Catholicism, a branch of the Church of England which had revived and embraced many of the rites, rituals and worship practices, if not all of the dogma, of Catholicism.   In parishes such as mine in Toronto the traditional Anglican services of Matins and Evensong were no longer the centre of worship but the celebration of Mass was considered a daily duty of faith and on high holidays an act of obligation.  Easter and Christmas were the two major days of the Church year but many other feast days dotted the calendar  including those bearing the name of Mary.  Marian worship was not as strong as in the practices of our Roman neighbours however on special feast days the Angelus was rung and said and the Rosary was encouraged as a source of private meditation.

Christmas Carols New and Old was born out of the Protestant tradition of the established Anglican church of its period however the Reverend H. R. Bramely was known to be a disciple of the  Oxford Tracticians and a strong High Church man.  It is little wonder than that a Marian carol found its way, surreptitiously perhaps,  into that first series of carols published in 1871.

The Seven Joys of Mary were popular in the devotional and artistic life of Medieval parishes and religious houses so it seems only natural that it should have become a carol - in the old sense of the word - to be sung at festive occasions.  Though not originally meant specifically for Christmas its introduction into Bramely and Stainer's collection has led to it being consider appropriate for the season. Again it is not a carol that was or is sung in churches (to the more Protestant it smacked of "Popery", to the High Church it was perhaps too frivolous in melody to be comfortable amongst the smells and bells)  however it was often sung in homes and by carollers as the season approached.

For some reason this carol is very popular in Eastern Canada -  its jig like melody does have a bit of that down-East Callie mood to it.  I recall that Rita McNeil always included it in her Christmas concerts and the version I've chosen to post is by Great Big Sea from Newfoundland.  Their version conjures up thoughts of an extended family around the kitchen fire, eating and drinking and celebrating the season as a cold wind blows snow off the  North Atlantic.  It is rather amusing, and comfortable, to see that in this rendition from Newfoundland - and it appears that versions differ from region to region -   at least three of the things that gave the Holy Virgin pleasure in her son growing up were things that gave every good Christian mother joy.

Thought I don't believe in advertising on my blog I believe also that artists should get credit, and recompense, for their work, so I'll mention that this is from an album called Atlantic Standards and is available at iTunes.  There are some lovely and little known pieces on it that I'm happy to have in my Christmas collection.


17 dicembre/December - San Giovanni de Matha

A Carol for Christmas - A Hymn for Christmas Day

The cover of the last (1878)  "library" edition
of Bramley and Stainers Christmas Carols New and Old.

In 1871 Henry Ramsden Bramley and Sir John Stainer published Christmas Carols New and Old,  a book of hymns and songs that could to be said to be responsible for the revival of the Christmas Carol in Victorian England and the English speaking world.  The two had met at in 1860 at Magdalen College, Oxford where Bramely was a fellow of the College and Stainer had been appointed organist.  At the beginning of the 1870s they  collaborated on a book of Christmas music - Bramley acting as editor, translator and in some cases lyricist while Stainer saw to the music and included arrangements thought suitable for use in church and parlor.

That first slim volume was to be expanded to a series of three hymnals and from twenty to seventy carols by the time the last combined edition was published in 1878.  In those seven years Bramley and Stainer introduced most of the carols that we hear in concerts, office parties, on TV specials, in shopping malls and at church during Christmastide.

That first edition included carols which we now take as givens at this time of year but for their time were if not new were certainly not well known - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, The First Nowell, What Child is This and Good King Wenceslas.  A wonderful interactive copy of that first series can be thumbed through at the Internet Archive - and notice the use of "f" or the "long s" in the lyrics.

The second book in the series included a carol which was often sung at Festal Evensongs during the Christmas season at St. Thomas and which  became one of my favourites.   "See amid the winter's snow" was published under the title A Song for Christmas and I particularly remember the wonderful descant and organ variations that Walter McNutt and his choir wove around it on those solemn evenings on Huron Street.  The text was by Edward Caswall, an Anglican priest who followed Newman's example and joined the Oratorians, and set to music by Sir John Gross who was known for the popular hymn Praise My Soul the King of Heaven.

I searched for a version that could perhaps bring back memories of those candlelit and garland festooned services at St Thomas's but came across this version by Annie Lennox that is as moving and memorable in its own way.  In 2010 Annie released an album of Christmas carols and songs and toured  extensively in North American during the time leading up to the holiday.  Though there are several postings on YouTube of the studio recording, one of which can be heard here, however  I choose a live recording that she did on a syndicated American morning show.  Despite the inanities of the hosts in the post performance segment - which can be fortunately avoided - there is a joy that shines through and illuminates the true meaning of this carol in her performance.  

The standard editions of Bramley and Stainers carol books (as in the Internet Archive edition) were simply the words and music.  However there was a more elaborate "library edition" published for the home archives.  The illustrations were done by famous engravers of the period - the winter landscape for Caswell and Gross lovely carol was created by Edward Dalziel  one of the four Dalziel brothers who were popular engravers and lithographers of the period. 

The first page of "See amid the winter's snow"
illustrated by Edward Dalziel.

The "library" editions were illustrated and
annotated with the history of the carol

In the introduction to the final combined volume in 1878 Bramley and Stainer wrote:

The following collection of Christmas Carols, new and old, has been formed with the purpose of providing a single source, easily accessible, from which those who are so disposed may make choice of songs, suitable in words and music, for the sacred and joyous season of our Lord's Nativity.

The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating the Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant ballad-singer or the little bands of wandering children, the practice of singing Carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent.

Among the Carols here given are some which are best suited for the old simple mode of rendering; others which require more ample means for their performance. Some, from their legendary, festive, or otherwise less serious character, are unfit for use within the Church.
.......

With this brief account of the purpose and nature of their undertaking they again submit the result to those orthodox lovers of music who desire to keep the Feast of Christmas with mirth which shall not overstep the bounds of reverence.

Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer
London, 1878

I can't be alone in feeling that their stated purpose and nature was more than achieved.

15 dicembre/December - Beato Carlo Steeb

A Carol for Christmas - Prologue

"Well what other sort of carols are there?" you may ask?  Well there are all sorts of carols - Advent, Easter or just for general rejoicing.  The word carol appears to have been derived from the French "carole" or possibly the latin "carula" but in either case it meant music to be played and sung during a circular dance at a festive time.   During the 1100s they were particularly popular as dance melodies but were gradually incorporated in to processions of a religious nature or as an accompaniment to the Mystery Plays that were popular throughout Europe.

After having heard the news the Shepherds carol the birth
of the Christ Child in this 12th century manuscript.

In France they became the folk-like noels heard in Provence and the countryside eventually finding their way in the 16th century into the music of Charpentier, Campra and other courtly composers.  In Germany the Lutheran church encouraged music at Christmas and Luther himself wrote several carols for use at Christmastide.  In England many of the carols were written to be sung outside the church as bands of carollers went awassailing from house to house, a tradition which reached back to the pagan times and accounts for the secular sound of so many of the carols that are popular today.

Brady and Tate's New Version of the Psalms of David
included "While Shepherds Watched",
the first Christmas carol in an Anglican hymnal.

In the 17th century carols were banned in England by the Puritans as frivolous and an unsuccessful attempt was made to turn December 25th into a fast day.  It was revived as a feast day with  the Restoration of the Monarchy and the reestablishment of the Church of England however it didn't regain its full significance until the 19th century.  Though many carols and Christmas songs were written the only hymn accepted at Yuletide in the Anglican church in 1700 was "While shepherds watched" when it appeared in a supplement to the New Version of the Psalms of David by Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate.  It was to be joined by two other carols in 1782 - Wesley's "Hark the Herald Angels" being one of them.  More carols were introduced in English country churches and by the 1870s had become a part of Christmas services throughout England and the colonies.

A wealth of Christmas text and music was added to Hymns Ancient and Modern in the period from 1850s onward and many of the popular carols we know and love today were composed at that time.  It was also a time when many of the earlier carols were arranged or reset to new tunes often having been translated from the Latin.

A band of children in Yorkshire, carrying greenery as symbols of rebirth, go from house to house singing carols in the tradition of wassail.  In exchange for their song and blessings on the house they would receive food, drink and sometimes small coins.

As I was growing up in the 50s and 60s a few popular standards - Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Joy to the World, Hark the Herald Angels and While Shepherds et al - seemed to be the only ones heard.  But during the 70s  I had the good fortune to be introduced to a treasury of Christmas music every week day afternoon by Bob Kerr on his programme Off the Record.  Much of what I enjoy today as music at Christmas I can trace back to his incredible eclectic mix of music for the season that encompassed so many periods, cultures and languages.  At the same time I became involved at St Thomas Anglican Church in Toronto and there discovered  Christmas carols that were part of a vital music tradition in the parish.  

Though I still love the old familiar carols there are so many beautiful songs that sing to the heart of the season and that make my Christmas a rich and happy time.  Over the next few days I'm planning to post a few of my favourites from those less well-known carols.  Hopefully they will bring you as much joy as they do me.

15 dicembre/December - Santa Maria Crocifissa di Rosa