No words for today’s earworm. Just something to celebrate Spain’s World Cup team—not for their win on the pitch, but for having the last word when the Kleptocrat inserted his fat self into their victory photo op. Even though he refused to get the hell off the dais, the team edited his considerable corpus out of the official photo and published it to the world.
So let’s have some flamenco in honor of the stomping Team España rendered to the biggest baby on the planet.
©2026 Bas Bleu
Well, another Dalíesque week in Kleptolandia. The protestors in “war ravaged” Portland played for keeps, since it seems that ICE thugs are terrified of frogs.
Not to mention a T-Rex with serious moves.
Meanwhile, ICE thugs in Chicago—defending the White
Christian supremacy, as ordained by the Orange One—shot a pepper ball point blank
into the head of a Presbyterian minister who was <checks notes> doing
nothing except urging the ICE snipers on the roof to think about Christian teachings.
And the Kleptocrat said the quiet part out loud:
There is no longer a First Amendment in that
dementia-fueled world of his.
Pro Tip: The courts—including an actually non-dysfunctional
SCOTUS—have upheld flag burning as protected speech. Of course, with these six
clowns, it may be up for grabs, especially as Thomas has declared that
precedents are not even really guidelines.
Finally, today Cadet Bonespurs is getting his second “annual”
medical checkup of 2025. It’ll turn out that he’s 6’4”, 225lbs of nothing but
muscle and once again aced that test. You know, the one no one’s ever aced like
he does.
So our earworm for today is the “Imperial March”. Typical of John Williams' oeuvre, it's heavy-handed, bombastic, hollow and overwrought. Like every Republican in office.
©2025 Bas Bleu
I spent part of Saturday afternoon at the memorial service for my friend Dick Kovar, one of the best exemplars of how to live a full life I’ve ever known.
Dick died in June, at age 96. But it’s not just the number
of years that’s impressive, it’s that he and his wife Carolyn celebrated his 96th
birthday on Valentine’s Day with a romantic dinner at their favorite restaurant
in Vienna (Virginia), and there was a family Easter celebration six weeks
before his death at L’Auberge Chez François. He grasped life with a joyful zest
that radiated out to all around him.
I last wrote about Dick in 2015, so you can get
the basics there. (That was the occasion of the little kerfuffle at the
Dresden train station on his and Carolyn’s Mittel Europa tour, where he ended
up in hospital for about a week or so.) I was the transponder of his holiday
reports in the days before he got an iPad—he’d laboriously write out his daily thoughts
on his iPod and send them and photos to me; I’d transmit them on to an email
list of about 30 people. I loved those trips almost as much as if I’d taken
them myself.
(In fact, when I decided in 2018 to go to Prague,
Berlin and Paris, I stayed in hotels that had the Kovar seal of approval in
each city.)
Dick’s long career in public service is outlined in this
obituary—30 years at the CIA as an editor, analyst and other things. Postings
around the world—which I found out about in dribs and drabs as, for example, he’d
mention that the French officers club in Saigon had great champagne brunches,
or that he acquired his taste for gin and tonic at parties thrown by the
British embassy in Nigeria.
(Fun fact: the last few trips that Dick and Carolyn took
before Covid were to Italy. Naturally, they dined on wonderful meals, but there
was a problem with getting bartenders to make a proper, Kovar-quality martini;
they didn’t seem to understand the concept of dry vermouth. IIRC, he ended up
taking a flask of vermouth on the last trip or two so that he could enjoy his
pre-prandial cocktail fully.)
On the subject of booze, back in 2014 I posted some stats
on global drinking, where the US turned out to be somewhat…not on top in
terms of whiskey; India—while behind Ireland and the UK—was still a contender. When
Dick read it, he commented that when he visited an Indian military base one
time, his observation was that the officers could definitely put it away.
There’s one more anecdote I want to share. I may have mixed
up the specifics, but either way, it’s illustrative of the kind of world Dick
created around him. In an email (or possibly a Facebook post), Dick mentioned a
party he and his wife had thrown for the international community somewhere; in
the course of it, a guest—a Sikh—managed some expansive gesture (I can’t
recall). Dick’s elder daughter Elspeth corrected him: it wasn’t a Sikh, it was
a Gurkha, and he’d done a back flip over a terrace railing into the garden
below without spilling a drop of his drink.
Regardless of whether it was a Sikh or a Gurkha doing a dance move or a back flip—that’s what I call a party.
Dick was in the CIA across our involvement in Southeast
Asia, some of the periodic blowups in the Middle East, Central American
skullduggery and other sundry geopolitical hot times. I don’t know this, but I
assume he would have been right in the thick of it—his job at some point
entailed preparing and delivering the President’s Daily Brief (back in the days
before that had to be reduced to two bullet points and a cartoon). He took
early retirement in 1980, worked as an editor for Time-Life Books and
returned to the agency as a contractor/consultant. He did this in one form or
another until 2015, when he finally really retired, at age 86.
One story that encapsulates his career for me is his 1987
testimony at the trial when General William Westmoreland sued CBS for
defamation in a documentary the network aired about US forces in Vietnam under
counting enemy forces. Dick shed light on the ways governments can “reshape”
reality to conform to their preconceived notions—at the price of individual
integrity, citizen trust and thousands of lives. You should read WaPo’s report. (Dick at one point sent round
a paper about this, but I can’t find it.)
Throughout this, the continuo of Dick’s life was music,
both sacred and secular. I met him in the church choir, where he was the
linchpin of the bass-baritone section. But for decades his great musical joy
was performing in the annual Washington Revels at Christmas time. This WaPo story gives you a bit of the flavor of those performances.
 |
| Photo by Kate Patterson for WaPo |
(There were about 20 Revelers at Dick’s memorial service;
they both sang and reminisced about the joy he added to their productions. He
was, it seems, a natural ham.) He loved Welsh hymns, and they permeated the
service on Saturday, starting with “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah”, to the
tune of “Cwm Rhondda”—one of the most majestic melodies ever, with a fabulous
bass echo, which Dick always relished when we sang it in church.
But Dick also had a deep, through-the-bone faith. We had a
couple of convos about that over the years; the resurrection and the life were
not in any respect theoretical to him, they existed as the alpha and the omega,
and so he was comfortable with the notion of death. Far from being something to
be dreaded or feared, it’s just the threshold to the next life, so why not step
through it with the same anticipation that you experience when you go from the
kitchen to the living room on Christmas Day? (My paraphrase.)
In this vein, Dick was endlessly curious about near death
experiences. He would send round accounts of the experiences people who’ve been
clinically dead and restored to life report. The white light, the benevolent
welcome. But I don’t think he needed them as proof—he already knew.
The last time I spoke with Dick in person was in 2023. I
think that was the only time I’ve ever seen him not wearing a tie—it was a very
nice polo shirt, buttoned to the top, under a sport coat. Most of our
relationship since choir days (which was in the last century) was via email and
Facebook. I’m sorry about that, but I’m also cognizant of that fact that
writing, to him, was his element, just like music was; I didn’t get to hear the
voice, but I definitely got the spirit.
On the subject of writing—I ragged on Dick for years
to write his memoirs. I don’t know if he did, or even if there’s just an
outline or a draft or a collection of anecdotes; I hope to God there is,
because—in whatever form or condition—it is pure gold.
So I’m grateful for the decades of exchanges, jokes, minor
tech crises, travel reports, links to Katherine Jenkins videos and everything
else Dick gave me. When I heard the news of his death, my first response was, “Oh,
no. No.” My second—almost immediately—was, “What an amazing, spectacular life,
and thank you for gracing mine with your friendship.”
I’ll leave you with two things. The first is a letter from
Fra Giovanni Giacondo (a Dominican and then Franciscan priest, architect and
archaeologist) to his friend, Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi, on
Christmas Eve, 1515. (There’s historical dispute about the authorship of this,
but it’s immaterial to the present discussion.) Dick read this version at his younger daughter Carrie’s wedding:
“I salute you. There is nothing I can give you which you
have not. But there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven
can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace
lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace! The
gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy.
Take joy!
“And so I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”
And I cannot write about Dick without music. “It Is Well
with my Soul” was not part of Saturday’s service, but I just feel that it’s
right. So here’s the Jehovah Shalom Acapella group of Uganda singing it. They’ve
got a good bass singer anchoring it.
©2025 Bas Bleu
It seems appropriate that we end the week with something honoring former president Jimmy Carter, who died last week at age 100. In fact, I’m choosing something from his funeral service, held yesterday in National Cathedral.
If any man—especially any president—can be
said to be suffused with grace, it would be Carter, who spent his entire adult
life in service and was guided at all times by the tenets of his faith. He was
an extraordinary man, whose decency is a shining beacon to the world.
So, let’s have “Amazing Grace”, performed by Phyllis Adams, with Leila Bolden on piano, from yesterday’s service.
©2025 Bas Bleu
I’m thinking that—given the events of this year, and of course the seasonal frenzy—we all might benefit from something quiet and contemplative.
I had a restorative yoga session on Monday, and it was really helpful. For all those who missed it, here’s Kitaro, with a cut from his Best of Silk Road album, “Taklamakan Desert”. Let him take you away.
©2024 Bas Bleu
We’ve got a two-fer today; first in my decade of Advent posts. Because, in addition to being Christmas Day, at sundown Hanukkah starts. So just as the frenzy is winding down in Christian homes around the world, Jewish families are gearing up for kids literally spinning like dreidels.
As I consider the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem stable, it
occurs to me that most of the excitement happened in the night: baby born,
shepherds led to the manger by angels, possibly the Eastern kings
bringing gifts for the baby. Christmas morning might well have been a recovery
period. Quiet. Reflective, even.
There might have been some people peeking in—having heard
about all the nighttime visitors, they’d want to have a look at the cause. No
doubt they went away, disappointed, because just a man, woman and baby, so what’s
up with that? “There’s nowt so queer as folk, eh?”
Anyway, here’s a lullaby, which started in Czechoslovakia;
it’s from the perspective of the animals in the stable. They open with, “Little
Jesus, sweetly sleep, do not stir, we will lend a coat of fur,” and they
promise to rock him gently.
Technically, the animals in the stable—the oxen, the ass,
the sheep brought in by the shepherds—they don’t have fur, really. But if there
were stable cats—I can see them
offering to snuggle up to the baby and purr him to sleep. Even a
sheepdog—entirely possible that, with the sheep all corralled, the dog would be
off duty and overjoyed to curl up with the infant. I love the image this
conjures up in my mind.
Here's Chanticleer singing it.
And then…Tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah,
celebrating the rededication of the Second Temple at the time of the Maccabean
revolt against the Persians. Hanukkah lasts for eight nights, which is the
number of days the lamp oil stayed alight in the temple, when there was only
enough for a single day.
“Happy Joyous Hanukah” was written by Woody Guthrie, and
why not? This is a holiday that lends itself to counting, and this song does a
whole lot of it. Also, particularly in this year, we need all the light and all
the happiness and all the joy we can get.
Here are the Klezmatics performing it. I happen to like folk music and klezmer, and this is a blend of both. (Well, heavier on the folk, but whatevs.)
©2024 Bas Bleu
Our Advent pick for today goes back to 14th Century Germany, by way of one of my all-time favorite collector/composers, Michael Praetorius, with some input from our pal Martin Luther.
The text of “In Dulci Jubilo” is what’s known as macaronic:
a mashup of languages, in this case (originally) German and Latin. I don’t know
the story, but I like to think it might have been an attempt to either dress up
a vulgar (as in, not-posh, not as in risqué) German thing with some high-toned
Latin. Or to make something Latin understandable to the masses. Or possibly it
was just something resulting from folks hitting the Glühwein and not being able
to remember what language they were supposed to be using.
It came down to us via the 19th Century
translation that swaps out the German for English, retaining the Latin. We know
it as “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”. (Fun fact: when I was a kid I wondered why
all the good Christian women were excluded. Were they out fixing a meal? Or
putting the kids to bed? I did not know.) It’s also often sung in such a way as
to make me think the choristers have been hitting the Wassail—lotta glissando.
It’s also one that I very often hear performed by brass groups. It seems to
suit those instruments particularly well.
To give you an idea of the macaronic thing, here are a
couple of verses of the German version:
In dulci jubilo
nun singet und seid froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne
leit in praesepio,
und leuchtet als die Sonne
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O!
O Jesu parvule
nach dir ist mir so weh!
Tröst mir mein Gemüte,
o puer optime;
durch alle deine güte,
o princeps gloriae
trahe me post te.
Here it is, sung at King's College:
The English version (kind of mid-way between German and “Good Christian Men”) goes:
In dulci jubilo
Now sing with hearts aglow
Our delight and pleasure
Lies in praesepio
Like sunshine is our treasure
Patris in gremio
Alpha es et O
Alpha es et O
O Jesu parvule
For thee I sing always
Comfort my heart’s blindness
O puer optime
With all thy loving kindness
O princeps gloriae
Trahe me post te
Trahe me post te
And, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”:
Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice!
Give ye heed to what we say
News! News
Jesus Christ is born today!
Ox and ass before Him bow
And He is in the manger now
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!
Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye hear of endless bliss
Joy! Joy!
Jesus Christ was born for this
He hath ope’d the heav’nly door
And man is blessed evermore
Christ was born for this
Christ was born for this
©2024 Bas Bleu
Not gonna lie—this Christmas is a tough one for me. There’s a great, gaping chasm in my heart for the loss of my sister and I confess I’m largely going through the motions. Badly, actually. Penny had the gift of happiness—she accepted the cards she was dealt and played them with all her heart. That’s a gift I have never possessed, so I’m basically just mucking about.
However, this can be a good season for dealing with loss—if
you don’t get wound up in all the festivities, which can’t help but taste off
and wear you out. For me, holiday
lights and music can take me out of myself.
So I’m grateful for my custom of posting Advent music every
December. It makes me seek out and immerse myself in seasonal songs, which is a
blessing.
Today’s piece is Joni Mitchell singing “River”. She wrote it while living in LA, where the only thing approaching riparian status is the LA River; it won’t get you anyplace you want to go (certainly not by skating), and Mitchell knew it.
©2024 Bas Bleu
Fourth Sunday in Advent for many Christians is devoted to the Annunciation, which was what got the whole thing rolling, as it were. The Annunciation was when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she’d been chosen to bring the Son of God into the world via virgin birth.
(Obvs the Annunciation did not occur during Advent; that
would be weird. Weirder than the actual impregnation by the Holy Spirit. It’s
just that this is the Sunday when we reference it.)
We only have the (male) Gospel accounts of that event and
they pretty much gloss over what must have been quite the awkward conversation.
What we’re told is that, upon receiving the announcement (no discussion
allowed), Mary replies, basically, “Well, okay. I am the handmaiden of the
Lord. Let’s do it.”
A prayer for today is the Magnificat, a canticle sung by
Mary. Technically, this takes us to the
Visitation (which took place shortly after the Annunciation, thus long
before Advent, but is referenced in seasonal readings), but I am not
responsible for how this shakes out. “Magnificat” is the opening of how Mary
describes her condition to her cousin Elisabeth. “My soul doth magnify the
Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
There are often discussions about the “magnifying” thing.
People talk about magnifying glasses, which I think misses the point.
Magnifying glasses make things look bigger; they stay the same
size, we’re just experiencing an optical illusion. Mary tells us that she
(through her soul) will add to the Lord; amplify him, if you
will. Or perhaps she’s saying that she’ll make God manifest, and
thus larger in our lives; she’ll actually add to the Lord.
So I think we should have a Magnificat today, and what better than J.S. Bach’s?
©2024 Bas Bleu
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
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 19th 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
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
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 17th 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
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
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
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
Today’s Advent tune comes to us from a Welsh folk song, dating back to the 16th 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
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
“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
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 19th 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 a
Luther-written 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. (Today it’s known as Genevan 42, from the Genevan
Psalter.)
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 might expect speakers-in-tongues dancing
in the church aisles. Yeah, a lot of dancing in this one.
Full of joy and energy; let’s
have some of that today.
Here’s the Saint Olaf College Cantorei singing it. If you feel like dancing, that’s absolutely allowed. Encouraged, even.
©2024 Bas Bleu
