Christmas Carols
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Seldom is the old saying about music being a universal language truer than in the instance of Christmas Carols, those splendid centuries-ld songs so filled with the wonder and tenderness and joyousness of the Birth of the Savior that they continue to delight and move millions of people of all countries.
On this record two distinguished vocal groups - the Celebrity Quartette and the Mount Holyoke College Glee Club - sing a group of Carols, some of them as familiar and as beloved as a Christmas tree, others not so well-known but equally affecting in their reverent beauty. The Celebrity Quartette, which is composed of four distinguished English artists - Isobel Baillie, Gladys Ripley, John McHugh and Harold Williams -, has chosen six Carols, five of which are a universally known part of the great Yuletide heritage. These are: O Come All Ye Faithful; Hark the Herald Angels Sing; Away in a Manger; The First Nowell; and Christians, Awake. The sixth of these Carols, The Cov- |
entry Carol, is a wonderful affecting song which is a part of the ancient Coventry Christmas Play. It is a lullaby sung by the mothers of the Innocents slaughtered by Herod.
The Carols performed by the one hundred and ten-voice Mount Holyoke College Glee Club represent no less than seven categories of Carol literature - the narrative Carol, the dance Carol, the so-called macaronic Carol in which phrases of the vernacular are interspersed with Latin, the children's carol; the carol from the Mystery Play, the lullaby Carol and the Carol of the Virgin Mary. Sing We Noël is a Sixteenth Century French Carol summarizing the Christmas story from the prohecies of the birth of the Messiah to the hosannas of Christians all over the world. Yuletide Is Here is a Swedish Dance Carol. In Dulci Jubilo is a German macaronic Carol, the words and music of which were discovered in a Fifteenth Century manu- |
script found in the University of Leipzig.
Holy Day Holy is another Dance Carol, this one originating in Cornwall. Wake, Nightingale is a Franconian Carol sung in olden times by schoolteachers and their young pupils in front of neighbors' houses. Touro-louro-louro and Jacques, Come Here are French Narrative Carols describing the adventures of peasants in journeying to the manger and their awe and reverence in seeing the Holy Child. O'er Her Child is a Breton Carol, one of many centering around the Virgin Mary. Carol of the Birds describes the sound and the flight of birds whirring toward the manger to "join in the shout, Noël." Carol of the Nuns of Saint Mary, the text of which is in Latin, is a Fifteenth Century Carol and is part of the Chester Mystery Play whose origin dates back to 1327. Patapan is a Burgundian Carol describing a children's procession. The text is by a French poet of the Seventeenth Century. | ||