woopert
LE
As we are in the run up to Christmas I'll try and briefly cover a couple of themes. The first is Advent Carols and the second the new school of polyphony from the US.
When most of us think of carols we head straight to a bit of Silent Night and We 3 Kings. all well and good, but they are actually Christmas Carols which are sung from Xmas Eve to Epiphany. Advent however is a strictly penitential period. The 4 weeks preceding Christmas involve a change in the colour of vestments and frontals from green to Purple and during the mass Alelluia verses and the Gloria are not sung and the organ isn't played except for the 3rd week of advent or Guadete Sunday (which means "rejoice") when the strictures are relaxed and instead of dark purple a lighter rose colour is used (you'll see this also on the Advent wreath if you have ever ondered why one candle is lighter than the others). After the 17th Dec the tone changes again and the music becomes more joyous in tone.
When it comes to carols, Advent carols foretell the death of Jesus as opposed to celebrating his birth (because the is no point to the latter without the redemptive nature of the former). In the English tradition these usually come in the form of musical accompanyment to plays, from which we get the "play carols" often named after the places associated with their performance and oration or local folk melodies. Perhaps one of the most well known is the Coventry Carol.
First written in the 16th Century, it is part of a mystery play called the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors and depicts part of Matthew’s Gospel and the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod orders the murder of all male children under the age of two on hearing of the birth of the Messiah.
The lyrics themselves are first thought to have originated from around 1534, written down by playwright and poet Kenneth Croo and the melody is slightly older. The story is told from the perspective of the maidens of Jerusalem on hearing of the birth of Christ and their hope that he escape. As the oldest surviving manuscript (of the time) was lost in the 18th Century, some of the meaning of the translations has been lost to time and is cause of speculation, the meaning of “And ever morne and may For thi parting Neither say nor singe” is somewhat unclear for example, but that doesn’t detract from the aesthetic of the piece. The harmony is a prime example of the picardy third, or the use of a major chord of the tonic at the end of a musical sentence that is either modal or in a minor key, and this device was quite common in creating a “medieval” sound.
Another of the traditional carols that come from a play setting of the gospel story is the Shropshire Carol, recently re-arranged by Stephen Cleobury. The lyrics are again from the perspective of the women of Jerusalem foretelling the sorrow of Mary as Christ is Crucified and the carol consists of a dialogue between the soprano/treble narrator and the bass Christus leaving John as his beloved disciple to care for his mother as he dies on the cross.
Perhaps one of the most famous, as it is sung quite often in the Kings College Cambridge Carol service and arranged by David Wilcocks is I saw three ships, which tells the tale of ships sailing into the Dead Sea with pilgrims on their way to Bethlehem to find the relics of the magi in the 12th Century. This version is an ed by Preston which messes about with the tempo and includes a fair amount of augmented 5th and 7th ornimentation and chord inversion plus a bit of jiggery-buggery on the organ (in the typically shouty Anglican style redeemed by a few decent harmonies when the organist isn't flipping out like a spacker in the bath with a 3 bar electric fire thrown in):
I do though, love the Basque Carol with it's tale of the Annunciation, but also the complex shifts in time signature from 9/8 to 12/8 to create a marvelous dotted rhythm and the G# passing note in the bass line creating an Amaj7 chord which then inverts later on in the piece.
And finally, one of my favourite pieces, which I get to sing quite frequently as it suits my tessitura. This time by Bryn Terfel
When most of us think of carols we head straight to a bit of Silent Night and We 3 Kings. all well and good, but they are actually Christmas Carols which are sung from Xmas Eve to Epiphany. Advent however is a strictly penitential period. The 4 weeks preceding Christmas involve a change in the colour of vestments and frontals from green to Purple and during the mass Alelluia verses and the Gloria are not sung and the organ isn't played except for the 3rd week of advent or Guadete Sunday (which means "rejoice") when the strictures are relaxed and instead of dark purple a lighter rose colour is used (you'll see this also on the Advent wreath if you have ever ondered why one candle is lighter than the others). After the 17th Dec the tone changes again and the music becomes more joyous in tone.
When it comes to carols, Advent carols foretell the death of Jesus as opposed to celebrating his birth (because the is no point to the latter without the redemptive nature of the former). In the English tradition these usually come in the form of musical accompanyment to plays, from which we get the "play carols" often named after the places associated with their performance and oration or local folk melodies. Perhaps one of the most well known is the Coventry Carol.
First written in the 16th Century, it is part of a mystery play called the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors and depicts part of Matthew’s Gospel and the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod orders the murder of all male children under the age of two on hearing of the birth of the Messiah.
The lyrics themselves are first thought to have originated from around 1534, written down by playwright and poet Kenneth Croo and the melody is slightly older. The story is told from the perspective of the maidens of Jerusalem on hearing of the birth of Christ and their hope that he escape. As the oldest surviving manuscript (of the time) was lost in the 18th Century, some of the meaning of the translations has been lost to time and is cause of speculation, the meaning of “And ever morne and may For thi parting Neither say nor singe” is somewhat unclear for example, but that doesn’t detract from the aesthetic of the piece. The harmony is a prime example of the picardy third, or the use of a major chord of the tonic at the end of a musical sentence that is either modal or in a minor key, and this device was quite common in creating a “medieval” sound.
Another of the traditional carols that come from a play setting of the gospel story is the Shropshire Carol, recently re-arranged by Stephen Cleobury. The lyrics are again from the perspective of the women of Jerusalem foretelling the sorrow of Mary as Christ is Crucified and the carol consists of a dialogue between the soprano/treble narrator and the bass Christus leaving John as his beloved disciple to care for his mother as he dies on the cross.
Perhaps one of the most famous, as it is sung quite often in the Kings College Cambridge Carol service and arranged by David Wilcocks is I saw three ships, which tells the tale of ships sailing into the Dead Sea with pilgrims on their way to Bethlehem to find the relics of the magi in the 12th Century. This version is an ed by Preston which messes about with the tempo and includes a fair amount of augmented 5th and 7th ornimentation and chord inversion plus a bit of jiggery-buggery on the organ (in the typically shouty Anglican style redeemed by a few decent harmonies when the organist isn't flipping out like a spacker in the bath with a 3 bar electric fire thrown in):
I do though, love the Basque Carol with it's tale of the Annunciation, but also the complex shifts in time signature from 9/8 to 12/8 to create a marvelous dotted rhythm and the G# passing note in the bass line creating an Amaj7 chord which then inverts later on in the piece.
And finally, one of my favourite pieces, which I get to sing quite frequently as it suits my tessitura. This time by Bryn Terfel
