Yule enjoy this!

Well it's nearly Christmas, (you can tell by all the rampant consumerism) so I thought how better to kick off the festive season than by introducing you to some fantastic, and unusual carols you may not have encountered before. The old favourites have their place of course, but I often think they run the risk of becoming over-familiar and thereby lose the essential vitality that a  Christmas song should have. And let's face it there are a couple (I'm looking at at you "Away in a Manger") that have been Nativity-play-ed to within an inch of their lives, to the point where some of us can barely stand to hear them any more. (Apologies if that's you're favourite, the words are nice but I just find the traditional tune unbearably twee.)


Anyhow, irrational dislikes aside, I'm going to start off with something old - very old. The Coventry Carol is 16th century in origin, having been used as part of a mystery play "The pageant of Shearman and Tailors" which Wikipedia tells me depicts the Christmas story from Gabriel's meeting with Mary to Herod ordering the murder of all male children under the age of three. The Coventry Carol as we know it today depicts this latter event, and as you would expect given the subject matter is probably the darkest carol you'll ever hear (apart of course from Wizard's "I wish it could be Christmas every day", which very skillfully evokes precisely the opposite feeling in me). Sparse harmonies and bare intervals abound, including a very interesting device near the end called a 'false relation', which boils down to a deliberate harmonic clash which in context is fantastically shocking. It's not always used, precisely for this reason but I think it adds something uniquely chilling and if it was up to me I would use it in every verse. Anyway here we go:

Sticking with the 'dude this carol is ooooooooooooooold' theme but with a complete change of mood I'll move you on to the "Boar's Head Carol". It's roughly contemporary with the Coventry Carol (give or take a century) but really couldn't be more different. You see "The Boar's Head" is essentially a carol about lunch. And it's completely brilliant. Never mind that it takes the soloist until the third verse to mention anything even vaguely religious, or that you have to be bilingual to understand the words. This is a muscular, rowdy revel where someone brings in a wild pig's head on a plate, sings about it a bit, mentions in passing that there's a reason behind it all then everyone shouts hooray and proceeds to have huge nosh. They knew how to party in the Middle Ages.

(P.S. For extra fun mispronounce some of the words so that they rhyme better!)

From the ancient to the modern now, and from a steamy, sweaty Tudor hunting lodge to a chilly night in 1st century Palestine, where in a sleepy Judean backwater some sweet singing can be heard coming from a stable tucked around the back of a packed inn. These are two back-to-back movements from "A Ceremony of Carols" by Benjamin Britten scored for only boy treble voices and harp. The first "That Yonge Child" sets the scene for us and creates a spellbinding, transporting atmosphere, whirling the listener back in time to stand next to the narrator in a dark Bethlehem street, listening to a song that "passes alle minstrelsy". Then just when you think it can't get anymore haunting or beautiful comes the lullaby itself "Balulalow". Something that I always find captivating if I hear it in a piece is major/minor ambiguity, that is whether the notes fall in such a way as to sound happy or sad. Here the harp alternates constantly between the two which as well as creating a bittersweet atmosphere also mimics the gentle rocking of a mother's arms. Follow the natural sway of the music and you'll see what I mean. Listen out too for the conflict between the singer, who seems to swing to a beat of 2, and the harp which apparently swings to a beat of 3. I won't delve too much into the mechanics of it all, that's not really what this blog is about, but I hope you enjoy their beautiful melancholic effect.

Now for something equally modern-ish (1920s) but with a more traditional bent, a carol by Peter Warlock called "Bethlehem Down". This was actually written as a newspaper competition entry, in the hope that the prize money would finance a session of what is known rather inartistically these days as 'binge-drinking' on Christmas Eve. It won, and Warlock and his pal Bruce Blunt (the lyricist) had a merry old time. Lucky them, and indeed lucky us since we've been left with this lilting carol, also tinged with sadness as it looks to the future of the child who lies listening to shepherds' songs. I like it too for the sense of restrained power and even hint of menace it has (listen to the basses rumbling away at the beginning of the verses) which dissolves away into stillness by the end. I hope you like it too.

And finally possibly one of my favourite carols, for the simple reason that it's completely bonkers. From the pen of William Mathias comes "Sir Christemas", an almost offensively cheerful setting of an anonymous ancient text, which is part carol, part dance, part drinking song and partly in french. To be honest I've never been completely sure who exactly the character of 'Sir Christemas' is supposed to represent (a St Nicholas-esque proto-Santa maybe?) but we get a concise 'Christmas for dummies' explanation of what all the noise is about ("Christ is now born of a pure maid; In an ox-stall he is laid; Wherefore sing we at abrayde: Nowell, nowell.) and it's all fantastic fun. Plus it has the best full on, jazz hands big finish that you're likely to hear in anything south of "O Come all Ye Faithful"

(Sorry about the link, Blogger wouldn't recognise this video for some reason.) 

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my festive selection and that it contained at least one thing you hadn't heard before. Merry Christmas to one and all!

Nowell!