Today’s Christmas carol comes to us from a Victorian, who
wrote it on his sickbed in 1859. It’s technically for Epiphany (which is the
post-Christmas season), but my house, my rules and I’m putting it here.
The melody for “As with Gladness Men of Old” may be more
familiar to you from one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns, “For the Beauty of
the Earth”. It lends itself to beautiful harmonies regardless of the lyrics. As
you can hear in this rendition from the Wells Cathedral Choir.
Wells Cathedral was one of my surprise discoveries when I
lived in Britain. You walk into a 14th Century building and see an
example of scissors arches that you think had to date from the latter part of
the 20th Century. See what I mean?
I’ve written about one of my favorite modern American Christmas
songs before. It came along at a time when there were powerful
forces working on our national sensibilities, and I believe it captured
everything in one place—melody, lyrics, even Judy Garland, of whom I’m not a
fan.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was the lynchpin
of the 1944 Vincent Minelli film Meet Me
in Saint Louis. It speaks of carrying on in the face of unsettling times,
and hoping for the restoration of family and loving friends in the future, even
if the present is more than a little frightening.
It was a perfect song for Americans who’d been led to
believe that, following the Normandy invasion in June of that year, the world
war should have been over by Christmas. Not only had that not happened, but the
German
Ardennes offensive—a total surprise to the Allies—engendered confusion and
fear; fear as frozen and bitter as the weather around Bastogne.
We live in unsettled times now, more than 70 years later;
recent events have proven that we don’t need to cross an ocean to face terror. So
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is just as timely as it was in the
darkest nights of our fight against Nazi totalitarianism. Wherever you are,
wherever your loved ones are, take a moment to step away from the current
struggle that has enveloped us, and let your hearts be light.
“Ríu Ríu Chíu” is a Spanish carol in the villancico style popular from the 15th
to the 18th centuries. This one was first published in 1556, in
Venice, and it makes the rounds at Christmas concerts here in the Bay Area. It’s
about the Immaculate Conception and the Nativity.
I’ve got it on a number of CDs (because I have about…a
lot of Christmas CDs). It’s lively, with an intricate harmonic pattern, and
even if you don’t understand ancient Catalan, it’s lovely to listen to. Here
are the lyrics, with translation courtesy of Wikipedia:
El lobo rabioso la quiso morder
Mas Dios Poderosa la supo defender
Quíso la hacer que no pudiese pecar
Ní aun original esta virgin no tuviera
The raging wolf sought to bite her, but God Almighty knew
to defend her; He chose to make her so that she could not sin; no original sin
was found in that virgin
Éste que es nacido es el Gran Moncara
Cristo Patriarca de carne vestido
Ha nos redimido con se hacer chiquito
Aúnque era infinito finite se hiciera
This one that is born is the Great King, Christ the
Patriarch, clothed in flesh. He redeemed us when He made himself small, though
He was Infinite He would make himself finite.
Yo vi mil Garzones que andavan cantando
Por aquí volando hacienda mil sones
Diciendo a gascones Gloria sea en el Cielo
Y paz en el suelo pues Jesús nasciera.
I saw a thousand boys (angels) go singing, here making a
thousand voices while flying, telling the shepherds of glory in the heavens,
and peace to the world since Jesus has been born.
The chorus is the sound of a kingfisher scaring away the
wolf from Mary (sparing her from Original Sin):
Ríu, ríu, chíu, la guarda ribera
Dio guardó el lobo de nuestra cordera.
The very first time I ever heard “Ríu Ríu Chíu”, it was
performed on TV by a group that would not have appeared anywhere near the top
of your list of interpreters of Renaissance classics. Nonetheless, they do a bang-up
job.
It’s the first Friday in Advent; in case you’re getting a
little wound up I’ve got something to help you step away and remind you to
breathe.
I don’t even know how I acquired George Winston’s December CD, but I’m glad I did, because
there’s a purity in the simplicity of his interpretations of seasonal music
that often can—like us—become overwrought.
Take “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head”. The Appalachian folk
carol was first brought to the world’s notice by John Jacob Niles about a hundred
years ago, and I’m sure you can find pages and pages of choral renderings on
YouTube. But I like this version best.
Okay, from music dealing with present-day
holiday overload, let’s move back a few centuries for some seasonal sounds.
The British Isles, in the days when “streaming” meant processing through a
church and singing.
First off, the “Coventry
Carol”, dating from the 16th Century as part of a mystery play.
Mystery plays, children, were a type of amateur theatre that gave the general
public an understanding of the mysteries of faith. These days we have all-religion-all-the-time
cable TV channels and, of course, the Internet, to accomplish that.
At any rate, “Coventry Carol” is from a Nativity play,
and I love the the lullaby elements (plus that surprise in the Picardy third). I always
think that quality is best conveyed by a women’s choir, but it’s not
that easy to find one on the Webs, so here’s one from Celtic Christmas.
Second up, down to another area of England for the “Sussex
Carol”. This one first started appearing around the late 17th
Century. I think the perfect way to render this is with a Church of England
men-and-boys choir, so here we have the King’s College, Cambridge, performing
it as part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
I’m not from the Anglican tradition; I first
discovered this service when driving from Virginia up to New Jersey as it was broadcast
on Christmas Eve from King’s College. It was magical to listen to the purity of
the music, the r-r-r-round vowels of the lectors, even the flutter of the pages
being turned between lessons and carols. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to
participate in one of these services.
But in the meantime, let’s hop over to Ireland for the “Wexford
Carol” (“Carúl Loch Garman” in Irish). This is the oldest of today’s triad,
originating in what’s now County Wexford in the 12th Century.
I must have a dozen versions of this from all my Celtic
CDs, but I rather like this one from Libera. It’s slightly overproduced, but
there’s an ethereal quality at the beginning that sets a good tone for me.
A lot of people find the period between Thanksgiving and
New Year’s difficult, myself included. So when I first heard Alison Krauss’s “Get
Me Through December” it stopped me in my tracks. Have a listen for yourself and
see what you think.
We are officially in Advent, the period before Christmas
that does not involve shopping, eating, standing in lines or moaning about how
you’re not ready for the holidays.
Advent is the time for getting ready,
for preparing for the arrival of the baby in Bethlehem.
For me, a good part of that preparation involves light
and music, so this year I thought I’d share some of the latter with you. We’ll
take it easy—one piece of Christmas-related music per day.
And let’s start with the ultimate Advent carol, “Veni, veni,
Emmanuel”. It dates from way back, you know—before monks started cutting CDs.
I used to sing in a choir in San Diego whose director
always had the men sing the first verse in unison (like monks chanting) and let
the women come in on the chorus. It was glorious.
However, I can’t find any version that does that, so I’ll
give you the King’s Singers. It’s pretty good.
I’ve spoken before about the habit of tech companies
turning English into Jaberwocky in job postings. It’s partly because they think
that the cool kids with the skills they’re looking for are basically magpies,
attracted by anything (and only a thing) that’s shiny and different. And it’s
partly because the people who write this stuff (or copy it from competitors)
are completely ignorant of the language.
By way of example, here’s a recent posting for a product
manager position from Foursquare. They’re the wonderful folks who built apps
that allow your friends to flood your social media with notifications every
time they turn a corner or enter some place of business. That being the case, you
know they want to attract top talent, so here are their requirements for the PM
role:
It’s the parallelize that eats my lunch. It’s actually a
computing term, to do with a program that runs functions simultaneously. It’s
something machines do. Humans, on the other hand, multitask. (As it happens, recent
research indicates that when we do multitask, we do none of them very well. But
employers don’t care about that; they just want someone who looks like they’re
basically intelligent octopi with no tentacle unoccupied.)
What’s interesting to me is the detail that follows the
offending word. Eventually they get to the do-everything-at-once part. But
under the rubric of “parallelize” the first prompt is “must be a self-motivated
team player able to work in a small, fast-paced environment without much
oversight.” That’s nothing to do with running parallel activities; what they want
is someone who sees what needs to be done and does it without regard to whether
it’s in his/her job description and without asking for validation for making
the decision. But they don’t seem to know how to make that sound hip.
As for the requirement that the candidate write
succinctly, I’m not sure Foursquare would recognize that if it leapt up and bit
them on the nose.
If you’ve ever moved house, you know that there’s nothing
like facing packing up all your possessions to make you realize how much stuff you have. Usually, it’s an
appalling realization, and the longer you’ve been in place, the worse the
feeling on account of you’ve had more time to accumulate.
I’ve moved four times since 2008, and I’ve culled a lot of
things every time. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still have a lot of stuff
to get rid of, even though I’ve gone through a couple
of rounds of decluttering in this past year.
However, since the beginning of October I’ve been
applying much stricter criteria for what I really, really want to keep with me,
which means that yesterday a couple of guys from a company called Remoov (no, I do not make this stuff up) took
away a queen sized bed, Ikea furniture and a whole lot of bin bags of clothes,
kitchenware, books and miscellanea from my third-floor-no-elevator flat.
I have to say that I feel lighter for watching that stuff
go. I’m going to be camping out for a bit on an air mattress until my final
move, but it’s such a relief to find a way to unburden myself—because that’s
what it feels like. A burden of possessions has been lifted from me, and I’m
very grateful for that.
I’m in that moving stage where the movee needs to use up
comestibles. As it happens, one of the items that needs to go is a bottle of
Moët et Chandon Brut Impérial, my favorite Champagne. Thanksgiving seemed the
exactly right occasion to start it on its journey.
