A rose of such virtue

We’ve had music about the visitors to the stable, but it’s getting close to the birth, so I think it’s time to bring it back to the person critical to such events.

The mother.

Yes, Mary has been a real trouper throughout the months that led up to the Nativity—fielding visits from archangels, enduring all the village gossip about her pregnancy, morning sickness, retaining water, having to pee all the time… (Look—do you think the presumptively male celestial beings considered maybe cutting her a little slack in this regard, tossing her a prophylaxis against the water retention or the nausea? No, I thought not.) Then, in her final month of pregnancy, here she is, riding an ass all the way to Bethlehem—can you imagine her misery?

Yeah, yeah—carrying the godhead, blah, blah, blah. That don’t feed the bulldog when it comes to the discomfort of being in your 39^th week and having to make a long journey. On a donkey. In winter.

Our Medieval and Renaissance brothers and sisters often referred to Mary as a rose, as in today’s pick, “There Is No Rose”, which dates from around the 15^th Century. It’s interesting to note that the “virtue” in the opening line isn’t just purity or chastity, but strength and even power. The Latin root of “virtue” is “vir”: man, virility. Those Romans might have thought strength and power exclusively male characteristics, but we needn’t be bound by those limitations.

The opening line encompasses this:

There is no rose of such virtue

As is the rose that bore Jesu.

Yeah—the teen-aged rose who made the conscious choice to take on this mission, from the git-go knowing that there was a shedload of pain involved in it for her. Who endured the village gossip, had to explain to her fiancé that she was pregnant by the Holy Ghost, who got on that ass and went to Bethlehem to have her baby in a stable, graciously receive all those gawkers—both high-born and low—and then packed up to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s soldiers. And who, in the end, followed him to Calvary to witness his particularly ghastly death.

So let’s hear Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of “There Is No Rose”, sung by the Elektra Women’s Choir, from Vancouver, B.C. Consider the power in these voices as you listen.

Yonder stars

Yesterday and the day before we had the lowly visitors to Christ’s nativity, so today why don’t we go to the other end of the class system. You know: the kings.

(I don’t want to hear from purists sniffing that the kings didn’t arrive until twelve days after the birth. Not my fault that they couldn’t ask for directions. Besides—if you’re going to go full-metal realism, there are enough natural elements to make the case for the big day not being in December, but in the Spring. The early Christians just moved it to mid-winter to co-opt a lot of pagan holidays. So just back off, have a glass of something and breathe deeply.)

“We Three Kings” is of American origin. It was written by a Pennsylvania Episcopalian rector in 1857 for a Christmas pageant. And it’s been sung by kids at every Christmas pageant in the country ever since.

When I went hunting for an interesting rendition of “We Three Kings Are”, I came across this one, which I believe fits the bill. Not being a fan of the X-Men franchise, I didn’t know a lot about Hugh Jackman, and I knew nothing at all about Peter Cousens and David Hobson. But it turns out that the latter is an operatic tenor, and the other two have well-respected musical theatre chops. They’re all Australian, and I’m guessing that this was for some Aussie TV Christmas special.

Warning: this is not your ordinary Christmas pageant. They're all having a bang-up time singing this; this level of fun is illegal in many states south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But the rest of us can’t help but wonder at these stars.  

O sing Nowell

So, we’ve seen the farm girls hurrying to the stable; let’s have some of the other observers of the Nativity. Namely: we need sheep. And shepherds.

First the sheep. Which we’ll round up from Messiah. Yes, they’re not real baa-baas. It’s a simile for sinners who have strayed from righteousness. “We have turned every one to his own way.” See a lot of that these days, don’t we? So, let’s listen to the Bratislava City Choir knock it out.

(Fun fact: I've listened to "All We Like Sheep" for...decades. It wasn't until I started singing it, from an actual score, that I realized it wasn't "Oh, We Like Sheep". Which is a whole other thing.)

But the shepherds were out watching over their flocks, probably huddling close to the fire and taking a well-deserved snooze. The dogs are out making sure the sheep don’t get into trouble—why not drop off for the night?

So, picture this: they’re drifting off (possibly after a few slurps of wine), and all of a sudden, boom! Some angel appears and yells at them, telling them to hot-foot it to…a stable! In Bethlehem! How will they ever explain this one to the guys?

Well, this carol, from Besançon, in eastern France, is all about the angel-shepherd experience. The melody is probably from the 17^th Century; the carol was first published in 1842.

Here’s the choir of New College, Oxford, singing “Shepherds, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep”:

The Child is sleeping

Let’s hop over to France, and specifically to Provence, for today’s piece. Because “Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle” originated there some time in the 17^th Century. It’s all about two farm girls who have found mother and child in the stable, and rush to tell the villagers of their discovery.

I learned this in a French class, and in fact I don’t know the English words. But here’s one translation of the first verse:

Bring a torch, Jeannette, Isabelle,

Bring a torch to the cradle, run!

It is Jesus, good folk of the village,

Christ is born and Mary’s calling,

Ah! Ah! Beautiful is the mother!

Ah! Ah! Beautiful is the son!

It goes on to describe a celebratory feast, and to admonish the villagers to hush because the baby’s sleeping.

Très charmant, non?

Join the chorus

Since we’re less than a week from Christmas, you’ve no doubt heard “Deck the Halls” about 42,736 times since Thanksgiving. 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.

The song comes to us from Wales, dating back to the 16^th Century, and the English lyrics were added (by a Scotsman) in 1862.

Here’s the original Welsh “Nos Galan”, sung—appropriately—by a Welsh men’s chorus, Barbers and Bishops:

But I don’t think I can hear “Deck the Halls” without having this classic Christmas dinner scene flash into my mind:

Gratitude Monday: evergreen

I got some not very heartening news last week, which I’m still processing. But instead of doing something like opening a bottle of single malt and sticking a straw in it, I decided to get a Christmas tree. I haven’t had one of those since 2008—for a number of reasons, including travel at the holidays and living for five years in a third-floor walk-up.

I got a small tree—maybe 5.5 feet—at Home Depot. (Note to self: don’t go there again. The woman at the garden center cash register could not bear to tear herself away from her mobile phone to do more than take money; God forbid she should have to do something like help a customer.)

Then I realized that in my last major move, I got rid of most of my fairy lights, so I had to run out to Target to get a string. Evidently everything is cold-looking LED, and twinkling is so last century. But I got the lights sorted, and pulled out my carton of ornaments that have survived. Some of them go back to the 70s—maybe a little worn, but still meaningful—every one of them represents either a gift or a trip. With a tree this small, I can only put on about half of them, but it gave me pleasure to do that.

I have to say that the final product is not up to my usual standard of just so-ness, but I am out of practice, so I’m cutting myself some slack. In the evenings, with just the lights on the tree and candles about the room, I’m grateful to be able bask in the glow of the season, and shut out everything else.

Comfort those who sit in darkness

Martin Luther is generally acknowledged to be a badass hymnist—he made congregational singing a key fixture in the Lutheran worship service, so it makes sense that some extra primo good Christmas music should come out of that tradition.

What you may not know is that one of the 19^th Century’s great translators of German Lutheran hymns was an Englishwoman named Catherine Winkworth. Daughter of a silk merchant, Winkworth was influenced by a couple of Unitarian ministers and brought a lot of power to expanding hymnody. Not even in her 20s, after spending a year in Dresden, she published a book called Lyra Germanica, which was a collection of German hymns she liked and had translated. Winkworth essentially opened up the world of Lutheran music to Anglophones, which enriched Advent for us all.

In addition to her interests in German and sacred music, Winkworth actively promoted women’s rights, particularly to education. But my first introduction to her intelligence was a delicious pun that was published in Punch when she was 16 years old. In 1844, Britain was expanding and solidifying its hold on India, and one of its imperial coups occurred when General Charles James Napier’s ruthless campaign to conquer the province of Sindh. In a droll play on two languages, Winkworth remarked to her teacher that Napier could have announced his victory with a single word, “peccavi”—Latin for “I have sinned.”

The pun has been credited to Napier himself, perhaps by persons who could not believe a female—much less a teenaged one—capable of such dexterity. But records back her as the author.

Today, we’ll have an Advent hymn translated by Winkworth. The text of “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” is based on Isaiah 40: 1-5. The German was published in 1671, set to a tune called “Freu Dich Sehr”, a setting for Psalm 42 that dated about 100 years earlier. You can hear the Renaissance in this music—almost see glittering court dancers moving in and out in an intricate pattern, possibly alternating with wassail. And at the same time, it feels so contemporary, as though you could see speakers-in-tongues dancing in the church aisles. Yeah, a lot of dancing in this one.

So, it’s joyous and energetic—absolutely perfect for the third week in Advent, when we’re rounding the final turn to Christmas. I love this one so much, Imma give you a couple of tries at it.

First off, the Cantorei from Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minn. Seems only appropriate, as Saint Olaf is a Lutheran liberal arts college, and every year they put on the blow-out of a Christmas Eve concert with about the entire student body in a lot of choirs.

And here’s the First Plymouth Church of Lincoln, Nebraska, letting loose on it at an Advent ceremony of lessons and carols. They got chops, too.

Lift up thy voice with strength

Today is Gaudete Sunday, the day when we take a step away from the spiritual preparation for Christmas and invite joy into our lives. It’s a precursor to the joy we’re meant to take of the Messiah’s birth.

The “Gaudete” comes from today’s introit, “Gaudete in Domino semper; iterum dico, Gaudete.” Which is to say, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice”. Today we add the rose candle to the purple ones on the Advent wreath to emphasize this shift.

The natural piece would be “Gaudete”, but since I did that a few years ago, I’ll skip it this time. And last year I gave you “Rejoice greatly” (from Messiah) and “Rejoice in the Lord Alway”, so they’re out. However…

Let's hear “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion”, also from Messiah. Because, after all, it’s those good tidings that we’re meant to rejoice over.” Here’s the Swedish mezzo Anne-Sofie von Otter singing it: