CB
Christmas
Hullo, this is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert
Kirkham. Today, we celebrate Christmas with
an anthology of music and words, and our script was researched and written by Mike Burrows. The
huge quantities and variety of music – and arrangements of music - inspired by the
long-lived spiritual value of Christmas has made selection extremely difficult,
but we hope that everyone will find something to enjoy amongst our choices.
We begin with a spry instrumental arrangement by Percy Faith, a
skilful band-leader, arranger and original composer, of Joy To The World, a popular carol that utilizes a theme
by Handel. The recording dates
from 1959.
Track 1:
Joy To The World, Handel/Mason/Watts/Faith
Now, two carols together, one from 14th Century Poland and
entitled, Judas Sold Jesus and Good King Wenceslas. Both originated as popular dance-tunes, and would
have been performed during general dances in church. Judas would have been disrespected; Wenceslas was a martyred young
Bohemian king who had been canonized. In
Winter, thanks both to thoughts of the rebirth of Spring or renewal of faith,
one could triumph over betrayal or untimely death.
The pagan origins of Christmas were more to the fore in mediaeval times
than they are today; public Christmas services in churches were like shindigs
held to spite the cold winter and flaunt what fruits of their labour were made
available to villeins and serfs. In
contrast to the exalted, cold and austere observances of priests and monks, they
were wild, vigorous occasions among the peasantry. There was much drinking, singing and dancing;
such licence that, eventually, the Church banned the performing of carols in
church, the ban being the foundation of a tradition of going carol-singing. It is possible that the church inadvertently
took Christmas back to Viking roots, in that among the Norsemen, the figure who
became Father Christmas was a man chosen yearly to go from homestead to homestead
and be plied with drink and food as he went.
It took things back to the Roman occupation and Saturnalia, too. Carol-singers roamed the countryside unchosen
but expecting food and drink in front of a log-fire in payment for their
performances. Feasts in castles and palaces
were feasts on plenty; in inns, taverns and cottages, they might be feasts on
more than usual
Track
2: Judas/Wenceslas (Trad)
The employment of professional waits or musicians by towns and cities
did not necessarily deter the unofficial variety from performances, although
such did not have the right to break curfew.
In the countryside, carol-singing slowly became more measured in spite
of the impossibility of maintaining control over the movements of bands of common
folk after dark. All the same, the mania for clampdowns had its rueful martyrs
into the days of Thomas Case Sterndale Bennett (1882-1944). Let’s hear his slyly folkish comic song, The Carol Singers, which for its grasp
of the complex psychological nature of British seasonal behaviours on both
sides of The Law cannot be beaten…
Track 3: The Carol Singers, TC Sterndale-Bennett
Track 3: The Carol Singers, TC Sterndale-Bennett
Memories of an old Somerset and Devon custom of Christmas Eve,
memories of the ashen faggot, remind us of Winter solstice customs of days older
still. The Yule-log was kept burning
festival long in the time of Arctic darkness. Like alcohol, it warmed
celebrants thankful for what the year had borne them to reward their
labours. Country folk’s regard for a
good blaze and auguries drawn from close observation of the peculiar nature of
faggot or log is not surprizing. It is
worth remembering that permission to gather firewood on a landowner’s estate
was not freely given, and to gather it without permission was a felony.
Track 4: Memories Of The Ashen Faggot
In Hamlet, there is a reference to the bird of dawning singeth all
night long - Christmas Night, that is. The Canadian composer Jean Coulthard took
her cue from this for a sombre, rapt and meditative piece for violin, harp and strings
of that title. Waiting on daybreak has
always been hard for adult as well as child since Christmas began. One expects it at every other moment, wanting
to be up and being and doing on a day of hope for the future. In this piece the listener travels far in
search of Christ’s and his or her own hour. Coulthard was one of Canada’s most-respected musicians of the last
Century. She was born in Vancouver in 1908, and died there in 2000. Her teachers included figures as diverse as
RO Morris and Vaughan Williams and Bartok and Schoenberg. Her personal style here reflects something of
most of those influences. Lovers of English
music may detect a noble yet at some moments impassioned, almost mediaevally
lacerating tone similar to that of Edmund Rubbra, who was also a pupil of RO
Morris.
Track 5: The Bird of Dawning, Coulthard
Track 5: The Bird of Dawning, Coulthard
Here's another carol, seemingly as
well-known a berceuse as any. It is one
that many children of a number of generations may have found poignant.
Track 6: Away In A manger, Trad
Track 6: Away In A manger, Trad
A touching description of Christmas
Eve hospitality, now. The hardness of
life in the countryside was visited on journeymen, tinkers, tool-sharpeners;
all making themselves useful to a district when need arose. The cold of Winter was bitter. Deaths from exposure were common among those
who worked on the land, particularly shepherds.
Where did they live, the itinerents, in a country where movement about the
country was curtailed by the Poor Law and
by zealous prosecution of vagrants or vagabonds? They had their name, tools and calloused
hands as proof that they were not sturdy or able-bodied beggars, a class of person
once branded or mutilated – hanged, thanks to Bluff King Hal, if caught homeless
and occupationless 3 times by the authorities.. A statute never rescinded
prescribed death for anyone caught
living like an Aegyptian (that is, a
gipsy) – it was passed in the name of Good Queen Bess, who later instituted
the first poorhouses. When could these nomad-workmen
of all weathers sleep swaddled like the baby Jesus? On Christmas Eve, perhaps? It is sometimes
hard to tell from social attitudes that Christians believe all men were made in
God’s image. The meaning of the beauty
of the divine human child in the manger, whose parents and worshippers
comforted and blessed his first waking or sleeping hours, has not generally
sunk in, it seems; because no-one cares about their parents, 120,000 children
have no real home, this Christmas, and as many as 17m adults will be buying
Christmas for others on the Never-never, as salaries don’t necessarily cover
popular celebrations. Other children still
won’t see their parents or sole parent for most of Christmas Day – or perhaps
they will be caring for them or for another sick relative. This is, after all, the 24/7 society.
Track 7: Swaddling
Clothes
Let’s hear another cradle-song, this time
for piano-solo, written by a contemporary composer. Archishman Ghosh is a research-scientist who lives
and works in Florida. Much-travelled and
aware, his musical personality is
close to his everyday character, logical, sceptical, slightly aloof, but
capable of expressing deep warmth and affection. Like Ravel’s, his irony and even sarcasm can
be suspect! The influences on his style
are many; ranging from Scarlatti and Mozart through Grieg and Grainger to
Scriabin and a later, grittier aesthetic.
The mark of his gift is that he has digested all
these influences to make his own, distinctive
music. Here, he gives us a well-worked,
deceptively simple Berceuse in F-Sharp. The harmonic sense and handling of rhythm and
part-writing on show have a real distinction and modern sensibility and yet
express something of the timeless awe a
human feels in looking up at a starry
sky. The tracings of a map, a meaning, orientation – and pure beauty, the
boundlessness of belief, hope and imagination can be…
On Christmas Night, will the stars turn
to angels who sing? Our children gaze up at us and our
tenderness as we sing them to sleep. So
sly is the composer's tonal sense that this innocent Berceuse in F# ends with seeming-total consistency
in F!
Track 8: Berceuse In F#, Archishman Ghosh
Track 9: Church-bells
ringing changes
A Virgin So Pure is an old
carol of great freshness and beauty, a song in praise of Christ’s mother. .
Here, the choir is accompanied with handbells.
Track 10: A
Virgin So Pure
Arise And
Hail The Glorious Star announces the birth of Christ in bright
directness. This carol is from Cornwall
and has a Wesleyan fervour. The
arrangement appears to be in 18th Century-style, the contrapuntal
parts contrasting and pitting registers against eachother in a cheerful,
rudimentarily canonic manner…
Track 11: Arise And Hail The Glorious Star, Trad
See Amid
The Winter Snow. Children
may miss snow in many parts of the UK this Winter. However cruel the winter cold used to be, if
one had a hearth, relatives and friends and blessed holyday, once church was
got over, it was possible to choose whether or not to fool about in it
Track 12: See Amid The Winter Snow, Trad
It’s that time of year again: we’ve
trailed through Advent, meeting the consequences of a year of all-too human
decisions – and perhaps must hope that the festival will grant us the kind of joys
it granted us as children: that the magic
will work to comfort and console all of us who long for peace, tolerance and
repose in which it is the soul that speaks and does for the sake of those whom
we love. To go a stage further, the more
people we show that we love over 12 days, perhaps, the more chance that magic
has of happening for us. The New Year
may be truly NEW.
This next track is dedicated to Miss Suvi Burrows, now on the way to grownupness. It is an evocation of Peter Pan’s Fairy-companion, but to her parents oddly evocative also of their companion. It is by Angela Morley, a fine composer and arranger of light music.
This next track is dedicated to Miss Suvi Burrows, now on the way to grownupness. It is an evocation of Peter Pan’s Fairy-companion, but to her parents oddly evocative also of their companion. It is by Angela Morley, a fine composer and arranger of light music.
Track 13: Tinkerbell, Morley
The composer Gerald Finzi once wrote a familial carol. Though an agnostic, he loved the culture and
imaginative appeal and the potential moral effect of Christmas traditions. Later, he arranged the carol for clarinet and
piano to exquisite effect. This music is
a miracle of expression, of deceptive simplicity. Finzi’s music may be characterized in an
image of metaphysical poetry that saw jewels as “contracted” stars and heavenly
bodies. A wealth of
experience of this world’s beauties, including those of humanity, is
contracted to become musical sounds supremely yet unpretentiously well-wrought.
One hears wisdom whose
expression is compassionate love, quite an achievement for a man of
enthusiasms and known to some of his close confreres as Frenzy! When in his farmhouse-home,
on Christmas Eve, this solemn and highly-strung little man obsessed with the
too-short time, was given to calling down a chimney-flue
to his children and their friends, in the person of Father Christmas…
Track 14: Carol from 5 Bagatelles for Clarinet and
piano, Finzi
It doesn’t take much for a parent to make Christmas a time of wonders
for a child who may have been looking up at the stars or imagining houselights
to be stars - or the light of
angels – on dark Winter nights.
The stars may be candles, Christmas-tree lights, or the faces of holy messengers;
as blessings draw nearer out of the void of night and ordinary life. An
airliner coming from or leaving Bristol, or a star or planet may guide from
huge distance and stand over a barn. Other
symbols may be: holly, mistletoe, baubles
-spirit-balls at their first appearance), crib-scenes, robins, frost, icicles, snowflakes
and carpets of snow, bittersweet cakes and puddings eaten at no other time of
the year, spiced drinks against the cold, burning hearths of domesticity and ancient
woodcraft a white-haired bishop of Myra
or sprite in red or green from a toy-factory at Rovaniemi in the north of
Finland, which might as well be the North Pole; who walks with Black Peter or drives
a sleigh drawn by eight reindeer between the clouds and stars..
Auditory symbols will be carols and songs of peculiar fervour or
pathos, the tunes various, the harmonies like a spiritual hug or caress of one’s
brow and hair, and as warming as taperlight or sounds of a brass band in the
coldest stone church. Light survives
Winter; the
cold can’t end warmth, life and hope, or the magic of love.
Track 15:
The Twelfth Day of Christmas, Trad
Presents appear and are unwrapped on Christmas Day. However swish with logos or cheap, they have
come seemingly out of nowhere as symbols of what love and sense of fun can
do. Not only can the loving child marvel
that something he may have wanted or that suits him fine turned up, but also – for
some years – the agency of the act of generosity is unclear and possibly
supernatural. Not bad! The element of fantasy is created from love,
pure and simple. It’s the love itself
that can seem supernatural to older minds.
The presents have been wrapped and await his or her Lord or
Ladyships. But first things first: the muddy boot-prints on newspaper, the
nibbled carrot, the glass with a drop of the tawny stuff in the bottom of it
and the plate with a sprinkle of crumbs of mince-pie. Then
come the corroborative details of what mum or dad thinks she or he saw or
heard, or the possible thesis to be drawn from this or that circumstance. The inquisition must be parried with the
maximum of tongue-in-cheek believability… What’s that all about, if it
isn’t love? In their deep happiness, parents
may extend, even improve on, the traditions of their childhood – even celebrate
the coming of their own children in memory of a holy birth in Bethlehem.
Track 16: It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, Trad
What is the name of our Saviour?
Christ? Father Christmas? Santa Claus?
Are His helpers angels or elves? Are
we saviours ourselves, either for ourselves or for those about us?
Does it matter? Kindness,
compassion, a willingness to rise to the slightest glimpses and epiphanies of
faith, hope, love and imagination we meet and to behave well for others from
the heart will create or go towards creating what we call
Christmas. We say that the angels sang, “On
earth, peace; goodwill to all men.” In
fact this was a mistranslation when the Bible was Englished. They sang, “On earth, peace to all men of
goodwill.” In truth, only goodwill can
bring about peace, either world peace, national peace, familial or personal
peace; nothing will do but goodwill – it is obviously up to those who have this
in their hearts and minds to spread the word, and to spread it through their
deeds, which when extended by many, may bring about peace. Peace through an unquenchable longing for peace
and goodwill.
John Rutter is the doyen of carol-writers, and with good reason;
reason that only some critics are incapable of hearing and believing. Here is his Carol of The Children, a rearrangement
of a movement from his lovely Suite Antique
for harpsichord, flute and strings.
This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Our Christmas edition was researched and
written by Mike Burrows. We hope you
enjoyed it and that
you will tune in again soon. We
both extend our best wishes to you all for a happy,
easeful and peaceful Christmas.
Goodbye!
Track 17: The Carol of The Children, Rutter
