A Few Notes
For both singers and listeners
Set I
I. Matin Responsory
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (Nunc Dimitus)
Text: Traditional Anglican English Translation of Aspiciens a longe - c.C9th
Arr. David Willcocks
II. O Come, All Ye Faithful
Attr. John Francis Wade
Translation: Frederick Oakeley
Arr. David Willcocks
III. 2 Carols, H.91
Gustav Holst
1. A Welcome Song
2. Terly, Terlow
IV. There Shall A Star
Felix Mendelssohn
Movement No.3 from the unfinished oratorio
Christus, Op. 97
Text: Compiled by Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen from both Lutheran and Biblical sources
Translation: William Bartholomew
V. Cœur de Jésus Enfant
Alexandre Guilmant
Text: Eugénie-Caroline Saffray (a.k.a. Raoul de Navery , a.k.a Madame Chervet, a.ka. Marie David, a.k.a M. S. David, a.k.a Louis Manuel)
VI. Winter Wonderland
Music: Felix Bernard
Lyrics: Richard Bernhard Smith
Arr: Greg Jasperse
VII. I Wonder As I Wander
Traditional Appalachian fragment, collected and substantially recreated by John Jacob Niles
Arr. Kyle Pederson
VIII. O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Music: Bone Jesu dulcis cunctis, from 15th-century French Franciscan processional
Text: The O Antiphons (8th–9th Century chant)
English Translation: John Mason Neale
Adapt.: Thomas Helmore
"Learning about a composer and the context in which a work was written can make learning the work itself easier because the singer gains a clearer understanding of the music's emotional purpose, phrasing, character, and expressive choices."
Karl Wilson Gehrkens, Essentials in Conducting
Few works have both the metaphorical and literal resonance of this arrangement of the ancient Aspiciens a longe. All at once haunting and delicious; familiar, and triumphant - in Willcocks' hands, Palestrina's spliced, and reimagined Renaissance polyphony becomes immediate, and atmospheric. And it's even more fun to sing than to listen to - if you haven't heard it before, welcome to the season of Advent at an Anglican Cathedral. LISTEN
Though this tune and originally Latin Adeste Fideles text have been attributed to everyone from King John IV of Portugal to Cistercian monks, it's origin is traditionally given to John Francis Wade (and occasionally speculated to be Jacobite propaganda). Now, with Willcocks' delicious harmonization, it just oozes Christmas in the English speaking world, and y'all know it, so sing along with us! LISTEN
Composed almost ten years apart, these two pieces give quite different impressions of Holst (H. 91 is not an opus, btw - it was a publisher's decision to lump them together, and that's just a catalogue number). 1907's A Welcome Song is Edwardian Holst; steeped in English folksong tradition, and full of pastoral grace, while by contrast, 1916's Terly, Terlow, with its simple narrative and Mixolydian allegretto has a decidedly medieval flavour, and seems more, uh, "Holstean." You'll understand when you hear them sung side by side. LISTEN
Ah, Mendelssohn. Drama without emotional excess. Romantic expressiveness in structured, classical form with rich, harmonic voicing. He's like spiced eggnog poured over maple walnut ice cream. Up against more, let's politely say "revolutionary" contemporaries like Wagner, many critics cite his conservative approach as a weakness. This is bunk. Felix was a rock star, and produced some of the most memorable and timeless music of the era. LISTEN
This delicate, intimate cantique is a bit of a divergence from Guilmant's better-known French Romantic organ flamboyance. Mirroring Raoul de Navery's deeply devotional language, he builds rich, enveloping organ accompaniment blah blah blah LISTEN
You've got to lean hard into the cheese if you're going to sing lines like "We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman, until the other kiddies knock him down" with a straight face. Jasperse takes a relaxed and sophisticated jazz-ballad approach, and brings out the romance in Smith's lyrics by weaving a rich, harmonic fabric for them to float on. Finding out that Smith wrote them watching children play outside a sanatorium window while recovering from tuberculosis helps, too. LISTEN
Singer and folklorist John Jacob Niles, traveling in North Carolina during the peak of the Great Depression, heard a young girl singing amidst the chaos of police dispersing her family of itinerant revivalists, who were trying to make enough gas money to get to the next town. Said Niles later: “three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material—and a magnificent idea.” Niles paid the little girl 25 cents each time she repeated the fragment so he could memorize it, and produced I Wonder As I Wander in a matter of weeks. Kyle Pederson's lush, passionate treatment is as heartbreaking as the story behind the song, and a fitting illustration of the question the text asks: Why would a King choose poverty? LISTEN
This text is a veritable mille-feuille of Christian tradition, from the cold stone of medieval monasteries echoing with O Antiphons at vespers, to its metrical Latin hymnic adaptation in Veni, veni, Emmanuel in 1710, The Oxford Movement's John Mason Neale's eventual English adaptation in the 1850s, and the gently "rinsed" words and subsequent metrical changes used in the current Anglican hymnal. The haunting melody, “Bone Jesu dulcis cunctis,” originally a 15th-century processional chant, was discovered by English clergyman and plainsong specialist Thomas Helmore, who put Neale's text to it. At any rate, something about the Dorian mode (think also of "What Child Is This?" and "The Coventry Carol") in this context makes it infectiously singable. Join us! LISTEN