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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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”.
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.
“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:
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.
