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CHRISTMAS
CAROLS REFLECT TAPESTRY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE
From the earliest time of human existence, people around the world
have worked to solve the same sorts of problems: how to make a living, and how
to find meaning in the world. The Christmas story and the spirit of the
holidays, central to millions worldwide, are a blend of tales and beliefs rooted
in ancient times. Many of these tales and beliefs pre-date Judeo-Christian
conventions entirely.
Silent
Night
180 years ago the carol "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht" was heard for
the first time in a village church in Oberndorf, Austria. The congregation at
that Midnight Mass in St. Nicholas Church listened as the voices of the
assistant pastor, Fr. Joseph Mohr, and the choir director, Franz Xaver Gruber,
rang through the church to the accompaniment of Fr. Mohr's guitar. On each of
the six verses, the choir repeated the last two lines in four-part harmony.
(The SilentNight.web site continues with an extensive history of
the song.) On
Christmas Eve in 1818, in a small village church (St. Nicholas' Church) of
Oberndorf in the Austrian Alps, 26-year old assistant pastor, Joseph Mohr,
wanted to have a special service to honor his Lord. Thus, he got together with
the church organist and teacher, Franz Gruber, to create a special new song for
guitar and voices, Stille Nacht! Hilige Nacht! It
was first printed in 1842. Twelve years later it was performed by a full
choir before Emperor Frederick William IV in the Imperial Church in Berlin,
establishing it nationally as a classical hymn for all time. A bishop in Florida
translated it in 1863, introducing it to North America. It has since been
translated into more than seventy languages around the world and has become the
most famous carol of all.
182
Years of "Silent Night" 1818-2000
Stille
Nacht (Silent Night)
Arrangement of Silent
Night from Joseph Mohr's manuscript (ca. 1820) in the Carolino
Augusteum Museum. It is based on the melody and guitar chords he wrote down
which is the earliest known version of the song. By Bill Egan. (file
in MIDI format)
Stille
Nacht, Heilige Nacht - one of the first recordings of the song on an
Edison cylinder. Performed by Hans
Hoffmann 1902/04. (file in realaudio) or 660KB
wav file
Real Audio Silent
Night, Part 1
Real Audio Silent
Night, Part 2
 In
this church, (in Oberndorf, Austria) the Christmas carol "Silent Night!
Holy Night!" was heard for the first time on Christmas Eve in 1818. Today,
the Silent-Night-Memorial-Chapel stands on the original site of St. Nikolaus
Church. Joseph
Mohr set the initiative for the creation of the Christmas carol "Silent
Night! Holy Night!", when in 1818, before Christmas, he asked Franz
X. Gruber to compose a tune for two solo voices, choir and guitar to
accompany the lyrics written by him. As Gruber reports in his
"Authentic Motive" ("Authentische Veranlassung") in 1854,
the "simple composition ... was met with approval on Christmas Eve right
away". The original copy of the carol got lost. The Christmas carol
"Silent Night! Holy Night!" set out to conquer the world via Tyrol. To
this day it has been translated into about 300
languages and dialects all over the world. A small selection of the versions
in various languages can be seen in the sound carrier collection of the museum.
The organ builder Carl Mauracher from Fügen (Zillertal, Tyrol), who repaired
the organ in Arnsdorf in 1821 and installed a new organ in the church of St.
Nikolaus (Oberndorf) in 1825, brought the composition to Tyrol. During his stay
in Oberndorf Mauracher got to know the Christmas carol - we don´t know when
exactly - and brought it to his country home. The Strasser family, singers and
glove makers from Laimach (Zillertal, Tyrol), took note of the carol and sang it
on their annual trips to German markets und fairs - for the first time 1831 or
1832 in Leipzig. Another singer's familiy from the Zillertal - the Rainer
familiy - brought the song to America. In 1839 they sang the carol in the open
air in the burnt-out Trinity Church in New York. At the turn of the century
"Silent Night! Holy Night!" could already be proved to have existed in
New Zealand, Africa, South and North America. It was spread by Christian
missionaries.
There are reports that the singing of Stille
Nacht! Hilige Nacht and other Christmas carols by German troops in
the trenches of WW I the evening of Dec. 24, 1914 in part, may have
initiated the legendary, unofficial Christmas
Truce of 1914 along the Western Front. Other accounts: one,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight
The
Twelve Days of Christmas
The twelve days of Christmas are the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany
(January 6th), which is when the three wise men supposedly arrived on the scene.
It is NOT the twelve days before Christmas as many erroneously
believe. According to A Celebration and History (ISBN
0-679-74038-4), by Leigh Grant, the written lyrics to "The Twelve Days of
Christmas" first appeared in Mirth without Mischief in the early
1780s in England. Grant states that the tune to which these words are sung
apparently dates back much further and came from France. Mirth without
Mischief describes "The Twelve Days of Christmas" as a type of
memory game played by children at that time. A leader recited the first verse,
the next child recited the second verse, and so on until someone missed a verse
and had to pay some kind of penalty in the game. In
the middle ages, religious holidays were virtually the only holidays, so
everyone was eager to extend such celebrations as long as possible. Christmas in
particular was extended from a one day event to 12 days from Christmas Day to
the Epiphany. In wealthy castles, a gift on each of the 12 days was quite
common. This made "The Twelve Days of Christmas" a very popular song
in anticipation of the gifts to come. It is not certain how old this carol is,
but it probably dates back as far as the 16th century. The
origin and meaning of "The twelve days of Christmas" has been
under dispute lately. For a while it was in vogue to claim a connection to
underground Catechism during the reign of King Henry VIII. That theory has taken
a lot of fire lately, by those who claim the song to be nothing more than a
parlor game. The
Origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas
Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
 Most
of the online references place "Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas" as being first performed in "Meet Me In St. Louis" in
1944. The original, however, was a much darker song, written about hopes for a
better Christmas in the future, and "Until then, we'll have to muddle
through somehow." The song was changed for Judy Garland, who did not like
the tone of the song. No
song has ever boasted a more auspicious debut. Sung by a young and
luminously lovely Judy Garland, "Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas" premiered in December 1944, the centerpiece of MGM's classic
musical, Meet Me in St. Louis. That month also marked America's third
year of war.
God
Rest ye Merry Gentlemen
"God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay", is not
asking merry gentlemen to rest but saying, 'God rest ye merry -- gentlemen.' In
modern words it might be, 'God give you peace, you have nothing to fear (dismay)
because Jesus came to save our souls.' It was almost certainly known before the
14th Century and was given a Victorian tune far more lively than most hymn tunes
of that era. "God
Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is one of the carols that was sung by the
waits, those municipal watchmen in old England who, like the town criers, were
licensed to perform certain duties, such as singing seasonal songs, including
those of Christmas, to the proper people. It was first published in 1827
as "an ancient version, sung in the streets of London." God
Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen The traditional English hymn, God Rest
Ye Merry Gentlemen, was called 'the most popular of Christmas carols' by
A.H. Bullen. It first played in the United States in its best-known modern form,
from an early 19th century London broadside, followed by a more popular
Victorian melody, from Sandys' collection. Another carol of unknown
authorship and probably predates the sixteenth century. It was first published
in 1846. Its title means "God keep you, gentlemen, in merry
spirits". One
of most popular Christmas songs, it first appeared in 1770 in a collection
called "Roxburgh Ballads". The melody was probably taken from a
popular London street song of that time. Although written in a minor key, it's
surprisingly cheerful. "God
Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is a carol that was originally sung by the
waits, town watchmen in old England who, like the town criers, were licensed to
perform certain duties, such as singing seasonal songs, including those of
Christmas, to the wealthy people of the town.
Carol
of the Bells, Ukranian
Carol
The music for the very popular holiday song, "Carol of the Bells," was
created by the Ukraine's most popular composer, Mykola Dmytrovich Leontovych
(1877-1921). Despite being born in Ukraine, living in Ukraine, and largely
working with Ukrainian music, Leontovych and his works are most than
occasionally called "Russian." The composition from which "Carol
of the Bells" was derived, the choral work Shchedryk, which was first
performed by students at Kiev University in December 1916, has not been exempted
from the mislabeling. But the Ukrainians, from one perspective, have had the
last laugh in this cultural comedy of errors, for by far the best-known carol
music to originate in any portion of the former Soviet Union was Leontovych's
brilliant musical portrayal of the sounds of Christmas bells.
While many of the Ukrainian
Christmas Eve customs are of a solemn nature, the custom of caroling is
joyful and merry. Ukrainian Christmas songs or carols have their origins in
antiquity, as do many other traditions practiced at Christmas time. There are
two main groups of Christmas songs in Ukraine: the koliadky, whose name
is probably derived from the Latin "calendae" meaning the first day of
the month and which are sung on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; the second
group of Christmas songs is called shchedrivky, which is a derivation
from the word meaning generous. The latter are sung during the Feast of the
Epiphany. Both koliadky and shchedrivky have pagan elements
in them, but many have been Christianized. For example, one pagan carol tells of
a landowner who is awakened by a swallow and told to make preparations, because
three guests are coming to his house: the sun, the moon and the rain. In the
Christianized version the three guests become Jesus Christ, St. Nicholas and St.
George. The very popular Ukrainian carol in the United states, "Carol of
the Bells", in its originality is a shchedrivka and tells of a
swallow (herald of Spring) that has come to a landowner’s house and asks him
to come out and see how rich he is, how many calves he has, and so on.
Jingle
Bells
"Jingle Bells is the only pre-Civil War American song on the A List.
There's no mention of Chrismas in the lyrics. And nobody sings it correctly
anymore. Songwriter James Lord Pierpont carried the tune around in his head for
a long time before he actually wrote it down, because he was 'a ramblin'
man'."
 James
L. Pierpont, the composer of "Jingle
Bells," perhaps the most famous secular Christmas song, came from New
England to join his brother, John, who ministered to Savannah's Unitarian
congregation. James took a post as the organist and music director of the
church, and it was while he worked in the church that he wrote and set to music
a reminiscence of his New England Christmases. The song seemed sprung from a
Currier and Ives print and it became one of America's archetypal Christmas
images (and even today, how strange it must sound when sung in Miami, Phoenix or
Palm Springs!).
The words and music of this secular
winter carol were written in 1857 by American Unitarian clergyman and poet,
John
Pierpont (1785-1866). Ok - this
is one great story: brace yourself. Jingle Bells is not a Christmas song.
It's the 19th Century equivalent of "Little Deuce Coupe."
The words and music were written in 1857
by James Pierpont for a Thanksgiving program at his church in Boston. It was
so well received that the children were asked to repeat it at Christmas. It has
been a Christmas song ever since.
"A Savannah musical researcher, Milton Rahn, concluded some years ago
that 'Jingle
Bells' was most likely written in Savannah, in a house located near
Oglethorpe and Whitaker Streets, which has since been torn down. The song
originally may not have been written for the Christmas season. It was composed
by a New England native, James Pierpont, probably at a time when, homesick, he
recalled his youthful days in New England."
The
Holly and The Ivy
“The Holly and the Ivy,” which Studwell classifies as a folk
song, was composed in the Gloucestershire region of western England. That area
has a history as the birthplace to many classic Christmas carols including,
“We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “The First Noel.” “It’s a
very aesthetic, gentle song, and rather ethereal,” says Studwell. “I think
it is getting a little lost nowadays – it doesn’t swing, or pound – it is
kind of an anachronism. It is a favorite of many people, but many others seem to
have never heard of it.”
This is a surprising integration of pagan tradition and Christian sentiment. Holly
and ivy are primitive symbols for male and female and the words probably
derive from an ancient fertility dance. 'The rising of the sun' almost certainly
has its roots in pagan religion. These words originate from some time before the
14th century and the carol almost certainly comes from Somerset or
Gloucestershire.
The "Holly
and the Ivy" is a traditional English carol whose meaning is puzzling
to most modern listeners. The meaning is hidden in the traditional understanding
of the significance of the holly plant. The symbolism behind the holly
unlocks for us the meaning of this traditional Christmas carol. To the medieval
and renaissance Europeans, the holly was a very significant plant. It is an
evergreen, which keeps its color in the cold months of winter. Its spiny leaves
with bright red berries reminded the English of the crown of Christ. In the
Spring, the holly plant blooms a bright white flower, which symbolizes the
innocence of Christ.
Aside from the familiar carol, "The
Holly and the Ivy," the ivy vine doesn't have quite the Christmas
tradition as mistletoe and holly, Aling said. It was associated with Bacchus the
Roman god and thought to bring good luck, fun and ecstatic happiness.
When Christian
mythology began subsuming aspects of earlier pagan mythology, St. John the
Baptist (beheaded at Midsummer, the day of transition between the oak-king and
the holly-king) became identified with the oak, which in turn lef to the
identification of Christ with the oak's successor, the holly. This is the origin
of the line of the carol "The Holly And the Ivy": "Of all the
trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the crown."
Do
You Hear What I Hear
Written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne in 1962, and recorded for the first
time on November 25, 1963 by Bing Crosby. The song embraced all the traditions
and feelings of Christmas, and soon became another yuletide classic.
Noel Regney, who helped write the beloved
Christmas song "Do You Hear What I Hear?" died last
Sunday (Nov 24) in Brewster, N.Y. He was 80. He wrote the seasonal
standard with Gloria Shayne, then his wife, in 1962. It was recorded by
Bing Crosby and Perry Como, among others, in more than 120 versions, in
musical styles ranging from jazz and New Age to funk and reggae.
But Mr. Regney wrote it as a clear and plaintive plea for peace at the
time of the Cuban missile crisis, in October 1962. His favorite version
was Robert Goulet's. When Mr. Goulet came to the line "Pray for
peace, people, everywhere," he almost shouted the words.
"I am amazed that people can think they know the song — and not
know it is a prayer for peace," Mr. Regney said in an interview in
The New York Times in 1985. "But we are so bombarded by sound and
our attention spans are so short that we now listen only to catchy
beginnings." ..... "Do You Hear What I Hear?" had its
origin when Mr. Regney was asked to write the flip side of a single that
was expected to become a hit, according to an interview he gave in The
Ridgefield Press in Connecticut. He wrote the lyrics, based on his
vision of a newborn lamb. He handed it to his wife and asked her to
write the tune, the reverse of their usual procedure. She was shopping
at Bloomingdale's when she thought of the first music line. The
finished version of the song moved the two creators so much that at
first they could not sing it. "It broke us up," she said in
the interview with The Ridgefield Press. The rest if
the article can be found at The
New York Times (you may have to complete a free
registration process).
Other versions of the story can be read at The
Advocate, and Newsday.com.
Caroling
Caroling by Wihla
Hutson & Alfred S. Burt 1954.
Al Burt, the son of an Episcopal minister, was a young jazz musician who
composed fifteen now-famous Christmas Carols between 1943 and 1954.
Drummer
Boy
Probably one of the best known Christmas songs around the world, who can't name
that tune of Pa rum pum pum pum. It seems that Harry Simeone created the
little story of the poor little shepherd boy presumingly traveling with the Wise
Men and others. As everyone preceded to give their gifts to the Christ Child,
the little drummer boy was sad because he had nothing to give, but to play a
song. This song got a smile from the Babe in the manger. Harry put this story to
song with Katherine Davis and Henry Onorati and published it with Mills Music,
Inc. in 1958. Click Here to here and sing along. Katherine
Kenicott Davis, 1892-1980, was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri and settled in
Concord, Massachusetts. A prolific composer, her most well known piece is
"Little Drummer Boy".
Fum,
Fum, Fum
This carol has achieved considerable popularity in recent years, owing
in part to Robert Shaw and his collaborators. It is of Catalan folk origin; the
English lyrics used here almost certainly are fairly recent, and appear to bear
little resemblance to the Catalonian text. We believe, however, that the
refrain, "Fum, fum, fum", is imitating the sound of the zambomba, a
type of friction drum; a rod projecting from the ‘drumhead’ is rubbed or
plucked with the hands. The zambomba is closely associated with the flamenco
tradition, including the flamenco Mass.
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