Under-appreciated Carols for Advent/Christmas

13

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  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Climacus wrote: »
    Off to look up Rejoice in the Lamb.
    Well, whatever I was expecting it wasn't meditations on the hospitality of mice and the blessed intelligence of trumpets! That said, it was rather wonderful in its unique way. Thank you for introducing me to it.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited November 2024
    The_Riv wrote: »
    ... On the "Bells of Dublin" CD there's no gap between the end of this song and a delightful reel that follows. I've taken to hearing the end of the reel as the end of the song. :smile:

    David played the organ on that CD! ❤

    I wish he'd made better arrangements about share of royalties - we'd have been set up for life! 🙃
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Climacus wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Off to look up Rejoice in the Lamb.
    Well, whatever I was expecting it wasn't meditations on the hospitality of mice and the blessed intelligence of trumpets! That said, it was rather wonderful in its unique way. Thank you for introducing me to it.

    It's a wonderful piece; the words are a bit off in left field, but the music's amazing. 🙂
  • Love ‘em both. Last sang the Sumsion at St Pat’s-in-the-West over 10 years ago after talking Madame la Directrice into programming it as the anthem for Advent 2. All the traddie little Roman choristers ( there were more than a few) were bemused by this “heretic music” and the rest of the mob loved it!
  • The_Riv wrote: »
    For years, Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb was part of the first level undergraduate choral conducting exam at my Alma Mater. I also recall Britten's Festival Te Deum as an audition piece for the MM Choral Conducting program. All of that to say (despite this being a thread about deserving yet underperformed carols) that there's a wonderful book about and in some cases by Christopher Smart's feline friend: Jeoffrey, The Poet's Cat: A Biography by Oliver Soden.

    I’m a huge fan of Rejoice in the Lamb. We took it on a (pretty local) Reading Week tour with my college choir when I was in undergrad. It’s a pretty impressive sampling of what Britten could do with choir and organ all in the space of less than 20 minutes.

    I remember singing (and very much liking) the Festival Te Deum (which for many years I misremembered as “Te Deum Festival”) as the last major thing we did in my first year as a choirboy when I was about 11 years old. Oddly I haven’t seen/heard/sung it since.

  • Climacus wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Would the CD you mentioned be “what sweeter music”-Advent and Christmas stuff- the one made by Christ Church St Laurence choir in 2005?
    It would indeed. I visited a few times when I lived in Sydney. A CD I still play quite a bit, in and out of the season (I came across Sumsion's Benedictus from Service in G and Bainton's[?] And I Saw A New Heaven through it which have become favourites).

    Off to look up Rejoice in the Lamb.

    Sorry to double-post.

    Bainton is the one. It has was a favourite of our choir director when I was choirboy and made an impression… I was actually revisiting it on YouTube maybe about a week ago.

    Speaking of Sumsion something else we sang a lot in my early choir years was his “They that go down to the sea in ships”. Worth looking up.

    I have something else on the CD player right now but I’m going to look up Life in a Northern Town. I think I remember the first time the video played in Canada on CBC… as you might guess northern towns are very much a Canadian thing and though I grew up in relatively southern suburbia there are several of them in my family history.



  • We’ ve gone away from carols a bit here. Maybe this is why there is now another thread about choirs.
  • Maybe but from carols we have moved on to carol services which may also include psalms, canticles and anthems.
  • Sorry to continue the tangent but as a last contribution from me - I did watch that video of Life in a Northern Town and now realize why my 15-year-old self didn't connect with it - apparently it never occurred to me back when I was 15 that the town in question wasn't a northern town in Canada...
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Piglet wrote: »
    The_Riv wrote: »
    ... On the "Bells of Dublin" CD there's no gap between the end of this song and a delightful reel that follows. I've taken to hearing the end of the reel as the end of the song. :smile:

    David played the organ on that CD! ❤

    I wish he'd made better arrangements about share of royalties - we'd have been set up for life! 🙃
    Oh my goodness! That's tremendous. Thanks for sharing that! I got to be a background singer for The Chieftans once in the early 2000s when they played an Independence Day concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and I'll never forget it.
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Maybe but from carols we have moved on to carol services which may also include psalms, canticles and anthems.
    Threads do wind and wend, but I'll be most glad for more carols here.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Last sang the Sumsion at St Pat’s-in-the-West...
    I may have heard you sing. A few times in the year I wanted a "Western" liturgy and would sometimes go to St Pat's-in-the-West, being from the outer SW myself when I lived in Sin City.
    Marsupial wrote: »
    Speaking of Sumsion something else we sang a lot in my early choir years was his “They that go down to the sea in ships”. Worth looking up.
    Thank you. That was beautiful and dramatic. I am in awe of composers matching text to music.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung? I ask as I, again, have never heard it live. I can't believe I forgot it above as I think it may be my favourite hymn, though there are a few up there. I love the tune and find the words a great meditation. Yet to find a version with all 9 verses, but that is to be expected.
  • I've already mentioned Javier Busto's "Ave Maria," but there are a number of exquisite settings of that text, and one of my favorites is Franz Bibel's. The recording I grew up with was by the Harvard University Glee Club. Man, I used to binge-listen to that! It was my parents' LP. Wish they still had it.
  • Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    It shows up two or three times a year (not just during Advent) at our place.


  • I may catch flak for it, but John Rutter's "Of a Rose, a lovely Rose" is, actually, fairly lovely. It's in his larger Magnificat which I've never conducted, but sung a couple of times.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    It shows up two or three times a year (not just during Advent) at our place.

    May have to visit you! My time in places where such things were sung was short, though I did visit several Anglican churches at Advent/Christmas in years past; perhaps I was just there at the wrong time. Thank you.
  • Climacus wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    It shows up two or three times a year (not just during Advent) at our place.

    May have to visit you! My time in places where such things were sung was short, though I did visit several Anglican churches at Advent/Christmas in years past; perhaps I was just there at the wrong time. Thank you.
    You’d be welcome! (Though I’m not at all near Canada.)


  • Neither am I. Australia. :)

    Thank you.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    It shows up two or three times a year (not just during Advent) at our place.


    The other main difference with that one on this side of the pond is that we usually sing it in the plainsong form or some metricization thereof, rather than the 3/4 half + quarter you get in the UK.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    It shows up two or three times a year (not just during Advent) at our place.


    The other main difference with that one on this side of the pond is that we usually sing it in the plainsong form or some metricization thereof, rather than the 3/4 half + quarter you get in the UK.
    Yes, always the plainsong form for us.

  • Mention of the Carols and Capers CD on the secular music thread has had me remembering some of the carols on there. @Eirenist is the Herefordshire Advent Carol the one which is on Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band’s Carols and Capers CD?
  • That's the one. And in a well-known choir setting by RVW.
  • Are there decent hymns for Twelfth Night?
  • I don't think you mean:

    "When that I was and a little tiny boy,
    With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
    A foolish thing was but a toy,
    For the rain it raineth every day" (etc).
  • Thanks for the earworm!
  • I don’t think anyone has mentioned “The Linden Tree Carol” (“There Stood in Heaven a Linden Tree”/„Es steht ein‘ Lind‘ im Himmelreich“), which we sang at choir tonight.


  • The_Riv wrote: »
    I've already mentioned Javier Busto's "Ave Maria," but there are a number of exquisite settings of that text, and one of my favorites is Franz Bibel's. The recording I grew up with was by the Harvard University Glee Club. Man, I used to binge-listen to that! It was my parents' LP. Wish they still had it.

    Biebl's "Ave Maria" is exquisite! I think it's usually done with all male voices, but the community choir I sing in did an arrangement for SSAATTBB, and we managed to pull it off with 100+ voices.
  • Mamacita wrote: »
    The_Riv wrote: »
    I've already mentioned Javier Busto's "Ave Maria," but there are a number of exquisite settings of that text, and one of my favorites is Franz Bibel's. The recording I grew up with was by the Harvard University Glee Club. Man, I used to binge-listen to that! It was my parents' LP. Wish they still had it.

    Biebl's "Ave Maria" is exquisite! I think it's usually done with all male voices, but the community choir I sing in did an arrangement for SSAATTBB, and we managed to pull it off with 100+ voices.
    It is indeed exquisite. Our church choir has sung it many times. John Knox was, I’m sure, spinning in his parking lot grave.


  • We have also sung it, in the men’s voice’s version. It was a stretch but somehow we pulled it off.

    Chanticleer has a good recording of this and other Christmas music - hopefully still available, but we bought it a while back so I don’t know.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    I've certainly sung it, reasonably well, and I love it. 🙂🎶
  • I have always adored "The Snow Lay on the Ground." It's rather obscure but the words are inoffensive at worst, and the melody is awesome."
  • Piglet wrote: »
    Climacus wrote: »
    Is Of the Father's Heart Begotten (I know there is another translation, Of the Father's Love Begotten, but I prefer the former) well sung?
    I've certainly sung it, reasonably well, and I love it. 🙂🎶

    Me2 in CCSL days; alwsys @ Epiphany carol service
  • I heard a version of "God rest ye merry, gentlemen" yesterday where the pronunciation of "wind", the movement of air, rhymed with the "mind" and "find" in the other lines which I found unusual. Poetic, perhaps, but unusual.
  • (for the linguistics, I assume at that time all three did rhyme...I just hadn't heard it, hence it being unusual)
  • Climacus wrote: »
    (for the linguistics, I assume at that time all three did rhyme...I just hadn't heard it, hence it being unusual)
    But my guess, given the Great Vowel Shift, is that they once rhymed in the opposite way—that mind and find were closer to the modern pronunciation of wind.


  • Climacus wrote: »
    I heard a version of "God rest ye merry, gentlemen" yesterday where the pronunciation of "wind", the movement of air, rhymed with the "mind" and "find" in the other lines which I found unusual. Poetic, perhaps, but unusual.

    That's what our school choir sang (mid/late 1960s).
  • People in the UK may be interested to know that Radio 3, all day from 6.30am, will be broadcasting seasonal "Carols across the country".
  • On which date @Baptist Trainfan ?
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited November 2024
    Next Sunday, December 1st. Sorry!
  • Thank you. A nice treat for my birthday. I will gladly skip café church to listen in the morning, but I will be singing in our own Advent Service in the afternoon.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    People in the UK may be interested to know that Radio 3, all day from 6.30am, will be broadcasting seasonal "Carols across the country".

    Thank you. I am listening to it now (evening my time) and enjoying it.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Talking of Radio 3, did anyone else listen to the Advent service from St John's College?

    I enjoyed it - we got This is the record of John and On Jordan's bank among other seasonal goodies.
  • Thank you; two wonderful programmes I have been able to enjoy these past two days.
  • Check out the livestream of the carol service @ St James King St here is Sidderney…
  • The_RivThe_Riv Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    I suppose if KINGS is recording it a carol can't be said to be under-appreciated, but I sure do like The Infant King.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    Thank you. A joy to watch and hear. Fond memories of my few visits.

    As an aside, I have only heard "Of one that is so fair and bright" by the Mediæval Bæbes of all places(!) in a very jaunty style; Benjamin Britten's tune was something else, very ethereal (to me).
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    I love Britten's Hymn to the Virgin - so simple, but so effective. And apparently written when he was only 17 - doesn't it just make you want to hate him? 😈
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    I'll look it up. 17!

    My post above was meant as a reply to Sojourner, just fyi (I had this thread open since yesterday and did not refresh it). Like The_Riv, I like The Infant King also.
  • Climacus wrote: »
    I'll look it up. 17!
    In Gresham's School sanatorium.

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