Snow on snow

It’s the Winter Solstice today—the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. After tonight, night retreats day by day until balance is achieved at the equinox, and then the tide turns again at the Summer Solstice.

Probably since the origins of humanity, people have celebrated this annual event, giving thanks for the return of the sun, gathering around bonfires, singing, banging on things, eating and drinking. Before the domestication of fire to candles, followed by gas lights and then by electricity, knowing that the hours of darkness would not in fact continue to grow was comforting in a world full of perils.

The festival we know as Christmas was overlaid on older traditions; the birth of the Son of God has perhaps more dramatic impact if it’s celebrated around the Solstice rather than sometime in Spring, which makes more meteorological and astronomical sense. The early Church accomplished two goals with the coopting: subsumed pagan sun worship into Christian rites and gave themselves license to feast away the longest nights of the year. It’s not a bad deal, really.

The English poet Christina Rossetti wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter” in 1872, although it wasn’t published until 1904. A couple of years later it was set to music by Gustav Holst and became the carol we now know. It’s an apt piece for marking the Solstice. The imagery of the first stanza just makes you shiver—earth hard as iron; moaning, frosty wind; water like stone; snow piled deep on itself. It’s a frozen world, an absolutely perfect description of the Winter Solstice.

I thought about that last week when we had overnight temperatures in the 20s (Fahrenheit). On my morning walk I came across some of that stony water. It was beautiful, actually.

As Rossetti goes on to describe the mother and child, the stable beasts and the angels, you can just about see their breaths billowing misty into the night air. But then she walks us back, just like the sun does, starting tomorrow.

It seems appropriate for today, and here’s one of my favorite a capella groups, Chanticleer, singing it.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Adorned with prayer and love and joy

I feel rather like I need a big anthem for today’s Advent piece. As you know, I’m a big fan of Catherine Winkworth, the extraordinarily accomplished 19^th Century English feminist who gave the Anglophone world some of the best translations of German Lutheran hymns. Earlier this month I gave you her Isaiah-based “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People”, which is among my all-time favorites.

Today let’s have another of her translations, “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates”, set to the tune “Truro”. This hymn urges us again and again to open wide the portals of our hearts to receive the waiting King of Glory. That’s what the season of Advent is, although we’re often told that it’s a period when we’re doing the waiting, not the other way round.

Also—perhaps if we fill our hearts with love and joy, there'll be less room for the fear, hatred and vindictiveness currently swirling about us. Just a thought.

Here's the First United Methodist Church in Houston giving it their all.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Die uns das Blümlein bracht

Michael Praetorius is one of my favorite composers; I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything of his that I don’t like. He makes the transition from medieval/Renaissance-sounding things to a more modern—or maybe a more universal—feel, that touches me every time. He was one of those court composers—like Bach or Handel or (sort of) Mozart, which perhaps gave him the freedom to set his hand to whatever struck his fancy. Masses, motets; experimenting in surround-sound (by placing mini-choirs in different areas of the space)—these days, in the Valley They Call Silicon, they’d dub him a paradigm-shifting, disruptive-tech, game-changing thought leader, and venture capitalists would throw money at him.

In those days he served a succession of German princes, ending at the court of Dresden.

“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” is my all-time favorite Christmas carol. I first learned it in a German class and I still only know the words auf Deutsch. You probably know it as “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”. The intricate polyphony of this piece always speaks to me of voices echoing in huge, candle-lit Gothic spaces, merging together on the final note of each verse. I love it.

There are so many exquisite performances of this; I'm giving you the British a cappella group VOCES8.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Comfort and joy

I think it’s time for something substantially traditional for Advent today. Hardly anything is more traditional than “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”. (Note the comma placement; the song is telling us to lighten up/be at peace, not commenting on our existing state of jolliness. It’s reminding us that our burdens are about to be eased by the birth of the Savior.)

The carol dates from the 17^th Century, when it was associated with recusant (Roman) Catholic families in England. This was a time when "celebrating" Christmas (the word means "Christ's Mass) was dangerous; Puritans did not hold with such frippery. The melody we know was hooked up to it about a hundred years later.

It was a bit of a palaver to find a version not by Pentatonix; here are my pals at King’s College, Cambridge, singing it, with the congregation during the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols recorded ten years ago.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

A long road back

Eighty years ago yesterday, the Germans launched their last-gasp attack on the Western Allies, sending Army Group B through the Ardennes Forest against American troops in Luxembourg and Belgium. The Allied advance across France since the D-Day landings had gone much faster than anticipated, and the mostly American soldiers were tired, had stretched their supply lines to the max and were in fact short supplied.

The Germans were aided in their plans by a massive Allied intelligence failure to pick up on the transfer and massing of infantry and armored divisions ahead of the attack. The surprise was complete, and in war, surprising the enemy is a good thing. Especially if they’re tired and poorly supplied in the middle of winter.

(Also—may I just point out that I’d have liked a word with those Allied commanders who did not think it possible that the Germans would attack through the dense Ardennes region because it had not happened for <checks notes> for all of less than five years. Dudes—they still had the discarded mess kits and petrol cans from May 1940.)

Well—we know the resulting campaign as the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans pushed a salient into the Allied front, all but surrounding the Belgian town of Bastogne; the Americans rushed troops to the area and—despite bad weather (preventing air support or supply)—held the line. Within a month, the Germans were in retreat, leaving tens of thousands of casualties, as well as hundreds of tanks, assault guns and aircraft behind, none of which they could afford to lose.

Today’s Advent piece honors that first day of engagement in the frozen forest. It should come as no surprise that “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was written in 1943 (first recorded by Bing Crosby). Its lyrics encapsulate the longing of every soldier on every side in every war for the past millennium to be with family and friends for the quintessential family-and-friends holiday. By December of 1944, with parts of Europe having been at war for more than five years and vast swathes of it reduced to rubble, I’m betting that any equivalent of “I’ll Be Home” would have people in floods.

Eighty years on, with kinetic wars in Ukraine (going on three years), Gaza (more than a year) and Syria (I think for most of this century), you don't even need the Christmas part. Just the home.

Here's Bette Middler singing it.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: a smashing dance

How is it that in all the years (this is the tenth) I’ve been posting Advent music I’ve never had anything from Nutcracker? Worldwide, the Tchaikovsky ballet competes only with productions of A Christmas Carol (and variants) for stage time during December. I don’t know how I missed it.

Nutcracker was pretty much the only cultural event I experienced as a child; every year my mother would take us to the performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and that was The Arts done for the year. And then I read E.T.A. Hoffman’s original in a German class.

Well, and of course there are those bits in Fantasia.

But my strongest connection now to the musical confection is hearing “The Russian Dance” as my sister Penny smashed ornaments in one of the activities of the Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar.

Every year, Lawson lets you vent your frustration and/or aggression on controlled destruction. Basically, you’re meant to “kill” three or more identical items lined up in a collection of items. Last year there were two varieties—Christmas ornaments and canapés or desserts. 

These games come with banger sound effects: smashing for the glass ornaments and slurping/crunching for the food. There’s background music, too, but that’s across all the games, not specific to the activity.

But back in the Olden Days, the music for smashing the ornaments was always “The Russian Dance”, and you had only a limited time to get as many as you could. (That time being the length of "The Russian Dance".) When I’d visit Penny for Christmas, I could look forward to her playing that game. (She had a profound hearing loss, so her computer volume would be cranked up to the max for these things. You could also hear her doing online jigsaw puzzles because of the “click” as pieces went into place.)

I shall never be able to disassociate that memory from this piece of music. But since it makes me happy, I am grateful to have it. And I think of Penny every single time I smash ornaments, which is an additional blessing to the satisfaction that comes from hearing those things in their death tinkle.

That’s my gratitude for today. And here’s the Cincinnati Ballet performing it. Volume up!

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

And shout, shout, shout, shout

Today is Gaudete Sunday. Since Advent is meant to be a period of preparation, reflection and quiet (hahahahahahaha—no, really, that’s what it was for centuries, but we’ve totally blown past that in the past hundred years or so), the third Sunday is the break from all that. You add a pink candle to the two purple ones you’ve lighted already, and you focus on rejoicing.

Well, alrighty, then. The title of today’s Advent piece is “Rejoice Greatly”, from Messiah. The context is that an angel appears to the shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem to announce the birth of the Savior. Instructing them to “rejoice greatly” seems somewhat understating the case, but I suppose times were different, both back at the original scene and when Handel wrote it.

I’ve been listening to a lot of sopranos singing this; my pick this year is Mija Park, so here she is. You will note that the lyrics are not complex, so you can concentrate on her voice and technique.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Merry measure

Today’s Advent tune comes to us from a Welsh folk song, dating back to the 16^th Century. The English lyrics about decking the hall(s) were added (by a Scotsman) in 1862. You will no doubt hear it several hundred times this month, but if you for some unaccountable reason do not actually know the words to the first verse, you at least can join in on the chorus, which consists of “fa”, followed by about 42,736 “las”.

Easy-peasy, although it helps if you've been nipping at the nog.

Who better to sing it for us than John Denver and the Muppets.

Except—what is Denver singing? His lips do not appear to be anywhere near the lyrics. And for the chorus, he seems to be saying “Blah”.

Interesting

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Sea so calm, wind so dear

Today is the feast of Saint Lucy, a Sicilian martyr of the Diocletian persecutions in the Third Century. When you hear the term “Christian martyr” applied to a woman of the early years of the Church, it’s almost always a young woman whose only defense of her virginity against pagan lechers is death. And so it was for Lucy, also known as Lucia, who was burnt at the stake in Syracuse. Although she did not die until given Christian rites…

Ah, good times, eh?

Well, interestingly, Saint Lucy (whose name derives from the Latin lux, lucis; light) was taken up big time by the Nordics. Interesting, but not really surprising. For one thing, when you live in areas enshrouded by darkness for months at a time, anything relating to light is highly valued.

For another, it turns out that, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, 13 December was dedicated to Lussi, a kind of female demon, who led her followers around wreaking havoc on everyone. In the period between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits (possibly joined by spirits of the dead) roamed the land and committed all manner of mischief. Lussi could even come down the chimney and take naughty children away.

So you can see why folks might want to wrap a saint rumored to have taken food and supplies to refugees hiding in caverns (wearing a wreath of candles on her head, so as to leave both arms free for schlepping stuff) around the Old Ones’ Lussi.

As an aside, driving back the winter darkness with lights, fire, prayers and making a lot of noise is a major theme of holiday celebrations. At least in the northern hemisphere. (People down under probably do it a lot around July-August, but their PR machine didn’t get the word out the way we up here did.) There’s more than a little blustery defiance in a lot of these activities, although it’s not framed that way for Saint Lucy, focused as it is on young girls.

(Although, I dunno—virgin sacrifice? I wonder about that because of the red sashes you see on these girls’ white robes.)

The traditional song for Saint Lucy is “Santa Lucia”, a traditional Neapolitan song, translated into Italian in the first stage of Italian unification, mid-nineteenth century. The lyrics are about light on the ocean, sung by a boatman and inviting Lucy to come join him on his boat . Scandinavians have adapted that theme of light for a particular celebration—you know, overlaid on Lussi.

Here is a typical Swedish rendition of "Santa Lucia": girls' choir, led by a girl wearing a wreath of candles on her head, processing through a candlelit church.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Harps of gold

“It Came upon a Midnight Clear” is one of the staples of Christmas pageants. Or it was in the days when they had Christmas pageants. I have to say that I was never that enthused about it because it, like “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, it always sounded to me like whoever was singing it was drunk.

However, it turns out that there are alternative melodies to both of them, and these, I find, are quite appealing.

In the US, “Midnight Clear” is sung to a tune called “Carol”, by Richard Storrs Willis, but in the UK it’s to one called “Noel”, adapted from something older by Arthur Sullivan (yes, that Arthur Sullivan). Here it is, performed by the choir of Winchester Cathedral (yes, that Winchester Cathedral):

If you’re interested, the alternative to the Fleet Week version of “O Little Town” uses an English hymn tune called “Forest Green”. Here it is from my pals at King’s College, Cambridge:

Turns out it’s actually not at all a bad carol.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu