On the Tenth Day of Early Christmas We Went to Ireland Again. A Little.

This has become one of the most popular of the pieces we do an a regular basis; we haven’t done it since 2013 so here it comes again with slightly newly arranged parts…

It is known as The Enniscorthy Christmas Carol to much of the world except that when it was first printed in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928 it was called The Wexford Carol. Things get really confusing in the world of traditional / aurally transmitted music sometimes. (Shhh. It might also be that the text is of English origin; I think I would be careful where I spread such rumors, though.) The melody is indeed of traditional Irish origin and is probably not very old: mid-19th century, maybe? Our arrangement goes through stages: from quietly meditative to a sort of early 19th century string quartet / or trio with voice style  to a reel with harp, flute, mandolin, violin, continuo, and voice. Really fun.

But the real reason we’re talking about this today is that I first arranged it in 2010 for Cayla Cardiff to sing and, man, does she ever sing the ifreann out of it! Here's a teaser audio from our CD Swete was the Songe:

As coincidence would have it, today is Cayla's birthday! Wish her  Lá breithe shona duit and come hear her sing!

In 3 more days. TEMP: An Early Christmas.

Click to buy tickets to our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13!

On the 9th Day of Early Christmas my Director Gave to Meee: A Weather Forecast?

All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year…

Loreena McKennitt sings it; and it’s on virtually every Anglophile Christmas or Solstice or Winter-related recording. I know of no reason we shouldn’t do it also! This traditional tune, first known as When Phoebus did rest, was set and arranged by John Playford for his country dance primer, The English Dancing Master, in 1651. Related versions of it are also found in the Samuel Pepys collection of broadsides under the title A pleasant Countrey new ditty: Merrily shewing how To drive the cold winter away and a version is also found in d'Urfey's multi-volume set Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. It remains one of the more popular English ballads in its several incarnations.

December is seene apparel’d in greene
And January, fresh as May…

Considering where we live, I for one am not so eager to drive the cold winter away, though I don’t have to deal with 6-foot snow-storms, either. At any rate, it’s a great song, David Lopez sounds wonderful in his solo verse (listen to the audio teaser below!), the choral parts are fresh, playful, and a little innovative, and evocative visions of hot chocolate and hot cider and maybe a hot toddy or two prevail!

The old and young doth carol this song,
To drive the cold winter away.

This song is also available on our CD Swete was the Songe: An Early Music Christmas in Northern Europe and the British Isles.

Drive the Cold Winter Away, just not too quickly, ok?

TEMP: An Early Christmas. In 4 Days.

It’s still early in the week, but the Friday forecast is 79F. In Austin. We must have some cold winter before we can drive it away, no? 

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13!

On the 8th Day of Early Christmas I Was Wondering Where This 12 Day Thing Started!

Seriously. When did this start? Was it the original Black Friday, but a more sophisticated 12 days than 28 - 29 or so? They (“they” being the interwebs) say it might be a derivative of a French folk song—name & date unknown—but The Twelve Days of Christmas was published in London around 1780 in a children's book, Mirth without Mischief. There have been several versions through the centuries, but the version we are used to is the 1909 arrangement by English composer Frederic Austin, which has had a few variations, too. Like most counting songs, this one gets more difficult to keep track of, especially if you’re partying hardy. No, TEMP is not performing this on a Christmas concert. I just thought that we should get to the bottom of this burning question. 

Those of a certain age surely remember Alvin and the Chipmunks version. I know, I'm sorry I brought it up. 

Tomorrow. More.

TEMP: An Early Christmas in 5 Days. Be wise, guys:
get your 8 tix in advance at early-music.org and
be sure to buy 9 TEMP cds at the concerts.
That’s it, I’m out of numbers. 

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13!

On the 7th Day of Christmas We Had some News about News of the French Carol Sort!

It's the 7th Day, so it must be time for French music. Let’s consult the New Oxford Book of Carols, my favorite reference book from late October through early December!

Words and languages change. In the late Middle Ages, nouvel an indicated the New Year, the time when carols were most usually sung. That phrase became corrupted to nouel and by the 16th century to noël, and the current use of a noël as a Christmas song was established.

Nouvelet can mean both ‘news’ and ‘newness.’ Noël nouvelet, meaning a newly-made song for both the New Year and the newly born infant-King, will be performed in 7 days. Our a cappella arrangement for 4 parts (sung by women) has been a fave for the last 6 or 7 years, even though there are often a few little tweaks from year to year. I’m not sure if the audients hear the changes but the performers do! Here's an audio teaser from our CD Stella splendens: An Early Music Christmas:

That’s all the nouvelet for now. Good night, and good luck.

TEMP: An Early Christmas in 6 Days.
Be wise, guys: get your tix in advance
at early-music.org

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13!

On the Sixth Day of Early Christmas We Didn’t Forget (Totally) to Talk about Music from the Lowlands!

Yes, I know, at the end of the 4th day we said that on the 5th day we would talk about music from the Lowlands that was related to the German music of the 4th day. I put it off for a day because I really wanted to talk about smelly, odiferous odors on the 5th day. But here we are.

The last few years, we’ve introduced several pieces by the Flemish composer Messaus and we’ve revived our famous Dutch carol. This year, we have but one piece from the Lowlands, a virtuosic choral work by Amsterdam composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, 1562-1621. He was known as the Orpheus of Amsterdam and he had a couple of other colorful nicknames as well. He was famous primarily as an organist, but he also excelled on the carillon and the harpsichord, and his improvisational skills were legendary. He was internationally renowned as a teacher of organists and was known as the “maker of organists.” He was especially important to German organists and was the teacher of virtually every important organist in the north German organ school of the 17th century, including Jacob Praetorius II, who was the son of Hieronymous Praetorius, one of the composers of our In dulci jubilo suite, the subject of the 4th day’s ramblings. And so it goes.

 There will be plenty of Dutch music in our April concert, Dutch Treat! Vasthouden! Je kunt het! Vrolijk kerstfeest!

An Early Christmas in 7 days.

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec 11, 12, & 13!

On the Fifth Day of Early Christmas My Direc ... Wait! What is that Odor?

Do you remember in “Independence Day” when Will Smith’s character was dragging an alien invader through the desert complaining about how the attack was ruining his July 4th holiday, oh, “AND WHAT IS THAT SMELL???” A little pummeling followed.

Uploaded by justin on 2013-02-16.

Well, don’t worry, the odor that the French noël Quelle est cette odeur agréable refers to is nothing like that. The text is a variant of the annunciation to the shepherds in Luke, focusing on the surprisingly pleasing scents coming from the manger after the birth of the baby Jesus: “Whence is that goodly fragrance flowing, Shepherds, to steal the senses all away?” The tune appears in English sources as early as 1710 so it was probably popular in France for at least a decade before that, probably coming from the late 16th century. It was used (as a drinking song) in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728, as were a number of melodies that we’ve come to love—more about that later. The song would probably be more well known in the West than it is, but since the title has been translated as Whence is that goodly fragrance, What is this perfume so appealing, What Perfume This? O Shepherds Say!, and a few other hard-to-negotiate-with-a-straight-face lines, it's probably going to remain an uphill battle...

Our arrangement of the tune is in the style of a gentle 17th-century, French Baroque chamber work, with two viols, violin, harp, lute, and flute in support of the tenor soloist, Jeffrey Jones-Ragona. It is really lovely. You should have no problem avoiding mental images of icky smells, alien or otherwise. Here is a teaser from our CD Noël: An Early Christmas, sung by the birthday girl, Stephanie Prewitt (see the Day 1 post):

More tomorrow about how to remove
unpleasant household smells.
Eight days to go.

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, and 13!

On the Fourth Day of Early Christmas … the history of a famous carol!

So there are these carols that many of us have sung since grade school—well, at least back in the old days when we sang them in school—and they are evocative of Dickensian times and visualizations fostered by viewings of many versions of “A Christmas Carol” and Scrooge and Tiny Tim, et al.; of course we didn’t really wonder about the true beginnings of these songs. (By the way, here’s a first: I’ve got a special gift for the first person to correctly name my first solo in school; it was in the 6th-grade Christmas concert. There are those who think I’ve gone downhill since then…)

“Good Christian Men, Rejoice” began as In dulce jubilo, which was taught to the mystic Seuse or Suso by angels in the 14th century. It went through some variations in the 15th and 16th centuries before Michael Praetorius made several settings of it as did many of the other leading composers. The harmonization that is commonly used in hymnals is John Stainer’s (19th century) based on the tune that is found in the Piae Cantiones (Finland, 1582), which happens to be the same source for the Gaudete from Day 3 of our journal.

And why am I mentioning this at all? Because TEMP performs a unique arrangement of In dulci jubilo that no one else anywhere does—as far as I know! Two different imitative settings by Michael Praetorius, one instrumental and one vocal—both are virtuosic—followed by a verse by him in chorale style for four voices and then one for three voices and instruments set by Buxtehude. The fourth verse is a massive 8-voice setting by Hieronymus Praetorius with rich textures and subtle harmonic surprises; we then return to the graceful Buxtehude setting for the ‘coda.' Here is an excerpt from the 8-voice setting from our CD Swete was the Songe.

And then Tiny Tim says, “God bless us, everyone!” Ok, not really. After that 7 minutes of musical calisthenics, we move to the Lowlands for…well, we’ll talk about that tomorrow!

That is all. As you were.
See you in 9-11 days, depending on which concert you come to!

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13.

On the Third Day of Christmas we re-visit a rock band reference!

Today's Treat: Alright, hands up! How many remember the wonderfully gnarly and spirited version of Gaudete that the British folk-rock group Steeleye Span recorded in the 70s? Yes, their pronunciation (“Gau-day-tay”) left choral conductors and educators a little, um, exasperated, but it was mind-bending and really crossed all sorts of cultural lines. They recorded it as a processional with a fade-in, fade-out effect: it was so great. You can hear the pronunciation in all its glory in this video from their 35th Anniversary tour.

TEMP is performing Gaudete again at this year's Christmas concert with just enough changes in the arrangement to keep the performers on their toes. Its origin is a little more veiled than the straightforwardness of the recording might suggest. It was published in 1582 in the Piae Cantiones, a collection in Finland of late Medieval songs from about 1430, many of which were Czech traditional songs. The melody is also known as a 15thc.– 16thc. Czech folksong, as a chorale tune in Germany, and was also used as a grace before meals in Martin Luther’s time.

Though the pronunciation and vocal technique will be more in line with historically informed performance, it will still be spirited and raucous (maybe not too gnarly) and, we think, mind-bending!

An Early Christmas in 10 days. In Austin.
Ex Maria Virginay Gaudaytay!

Click to buy tickets for our Christmas concerts on Dec. 11, 12, & 13.