Ah, the Big Day at last. Let’s pull out all the stops,
open our hearts and throats, and fill wherever we are with joyful sounds. What
better to do it with than “Adeste Fidelis”?
I associate this one with midnight masses, the anthem
that sends folks out bundling up into the cold night toward whatever their
Christmas celebration entails. What is love most about it is the descant on the
verse that starts out “Sing, choirs of angels.” That sucker just makes my chest
tighten, whether I’m singing it or hearing it.
Here are my pals at King’s College, Cambridge, doing it
for you.
My, how Advent has flown past—Christmas is almost upon
us. So let’s have another carol about the baby, another lullaby.
There are plenty of songs about Mary, about the shepherds,
the king-magi, etc. Even one about some freaking drummer boy, which I never
understood, because what the hell is some kid doing out in the middle of Judea
in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (or early spring, if you’re
some kind of killjoy purist) with a damn drum? Like any parents would have put
up with that nonsense for a New York minute.
I like today’s because it’s from the perspective of the
animals in the stable. They respond to the notion of a newborn in their midst
by offering their warmth, literally. I can see their breath as they snuffle and
snort around the manger in that cold night. I confess that I don’t know that much
about the large animals, but having a cat next to you pushing out the KTUs
(Kitty Thermal Units) at a rate of knots can make all the difference in nippy
weather.
I also don’t know that much about the history of this one.
“Hajej, Nynej, Jezisku” is Czech, possibly from somewhere between the 14th
and 16th Centuries. We know it in English as “The Rocking Carol”,
and it does indeed give you that quiet sense of being gently rocked. It’s very
comforting musically as well as metaphorically.
I’m giving you Chanticleer’s version of it. I had the
great good fortune to attend one of their Christmas concerts this week, held in
the perfect venue for their voices (including their kickass countertenors)—Mission
Santa Clara. I have many of their CDs, and I love how they put together a
Christmas carol. Especially this one.
Today’s Christmas song is a blast from the past. Long
past? No, my past. I can’t recall how the Chad Mitchell Trio came to my
attention, but I remember “The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy” from the start.
It wasn’t on a Christmas album; I don’t even know if they
made a Christmas album. But even if it’s not Christmas-specific, it’s about
baby Jesus, so I say it’s in. It’s not quite a lullaby; well, maybe a Calypso
lullaby. Belafonte has a version and he’s fine. But I prefer the Mitchell
arrangement.
You can’t have a Christmas season without a rendition of “Hallelujah Chorus”,
can you? And you know what a sucker I am for flash mobs singing it. I’ve done
entire Decembers with a different one every week.
For this year I’m going back
to one of my favorites, at a Calgary shopping mall food court. There have been
plenty of them in the five years since this one surprised unsuspecting mall
rats, but I like this one right much. For one thing, the acoustics are better
than a lot of the ones in multi-level atria. (There’s one from the Paris Opera
Society from a couple of years ago. I wanted to share that, but it just doesn’t
sound good enough, even though I’m sure it was a spectacular experience.)
And for another—they were the pioneers in “Hallelujah”
flash mobbery. They set the tradition.
Having popped in to Trader Joe’s last Friday to pick up enough
milk to see me through the next week, let me devote today’s Gratitude Monday to
expressing my relief and thanks that I have no call to go grocery shopping
before Christmas.
Because the normally idiotic drivers of the Valley They
Call Silicon have upped their game by an order of magnitude, and my own
bandwidth has narrowed somewhat, so I don’t want to put it to the test.
Not needing to be anywhere that shoppers are likely to
congregate frees me up to focus on other things, like observing and commenting,
for which I am also grateful.
Let’s stay around the same time period as yesterday’s
piece, but move to the Mediterranean area for our Christmas music today.
Pietro Yon wrote “Gesu Bambino” in 1917. Imagine the
drive to pull yourself figuratively out of the fourth year of a war that was
strangling Italy (and France, and Germany, and Russia, and Britain…) to write a
carol about angels and shepherds rejoicing over the birth of the Savior.
I like the way the melody ripples in a swirling
pattern, like water bubbling down a hillside. As per usual, it’s about the baby
Jesus (well—that is the title, after
all), to whom it refers as “The Christmas Rose”, which is kind of pretty.
I love the refrain:
Osanna, osanna cantaro
Con giubilante cor
I tuoi pastori ed angeli
O re di luce e amor
Your shepherds and angels sang hosanna, hosanna with
jubilant heart, O king of light and love.
And here are two of my favorite sopranos singing it at
Carnegie Hall:
