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Contents:
DDD Total time = 57.33 Programme Notes:Ask any Englishman to list the ingredients of an English Christmas, and - besides the Queen's message, turkey, plum pudding and Christmas trees - he will undoubtedly conjure up a picture of candle-lit cathedrals and angelic trebles quiring traditional Victorian carols. The Advent and Christmas services as celebrated in the great English cathedrals - and as documented on this CD - are undoubtedly one of Britannia's major contributions to Western culture; and yet their constituent parts are on the whole hardly more English than either the Christmas tree or the man who introduced it to our country 150 years ago, Queen Victoria's husband Albert von Saxe-Coburg. Many of the most popular English Christmas carols are in fact at least partly foreign in origin. German or French tunes and texts have been adopted, reharmonised, reworked and adapted, until the result sounds to us so quintessentially 'English' that the sources are all but forgotten. The first work on this CD - Come, thou Redeemer of the earth - is a perfect example. It has a melody that was originally adapted by Michael Praetorius, one of the most successful German Protestant composers of the late 16th century; this in turn was harmonised by the Englishman G. R. Woodward; a descant was added by the organist and conductor John Scott; and the whole is sung to words of St Ambrose in a translation by J. M. Neale. Neale was but one of many fine wordsmiths of the English church; others represented here include Charles Wesley, Christina Rosetti, G. R. Woodward, C. F. Alexander and Eleanor Farjeon. Without them, the English Christmas carol as we know it would hardly exist at all, though their names are today barely known among except the cognoscenti. Farjeon is something of an exception, though only because of unexpected fame attained in the 1970s when the pop singer Cat Stevens made an arrangement of her Morning has broken. The ever-popular Hark! the herald angels sing - a must for any carol service - was in fact composed by Felix Mendelssohn (though given his Anglophilia, he could for our purposes almost count as an Englishman himself; he was after all the favourite living composer of Victoria and Albert). There is incidentally a tenuous but interesting connection between Mendelssohn and H. J. Gauntlett, the composer of Once in royal David's city. Gauntlett was Mendelssohn's choice of organist for a performance of his Elijah in Birmingham in 1846, and Mendelssohn declared him to be 'one of the most remarkable professional musicians of his age.' However, the German connection among the music recorded here is perhaps strongest where one might least expect it, namely in the case of In dulci jubilo as arranged by R. L. Pearsall. Pearsall was born to a wealthy family in Clifton in 1795, was educated privately, and made a name for himself with modern madrigals intentionally similar in conception to those composed by Thomas Morley and others in around 1600. In dulci jubilo - based on a German tune - is one of these, though to us today, in both word and music, it could hardly sound more English. In fact, Pearsall spent most of his life in the German-speaking world. He emigrated to Mainz in 1825, then spent several years in Carlsruhe before taking up residence in Wartensee castle in north-eastern Switzerland. It is a curious quirk of fate that this composer, so steadfastly Anglican, should have converted to Roman Catholicism just three days before his death. He left a major part of his estate to the monastery in Einsiedeln. Other foreign tunes sung here in their Anglicised form include some of French origin, namely Gabriel's message, A maiden most gentle and Ding, dong! merrily on high. The last of these - one of the most popular of all English carols - became famous in the harmonisation by Charles Wood, sometime director of music at Gronville & Caius College in Cambridge. In fact, many of the best and best-known carols were either composed by practising organists and choral conductors in the Anglican tradition, or became popular in arrangements by them. This direct connection between composer/arranger and performer is particularly characteristic of the English carol. One of the most prominent choral conductors to have emerged in the past forty years is David Willcocks, former director of the choir of King's College, Cambridge. He was responsible for either the harmonisation or the descant of no less than four of the carols sung here. No carol service is complete without a selection of chorale preludes for organ solo. Two are offered here: In dulci jubilo, a relatively early work by Johann Sebastian Bach, and Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen op. 122, No. 8, written in June 1896 by Johannes Brahms. Despite the Christmassy connection of the original text of the latter ('A rose [i.e. Jesus] has sprung from a tender root [i.e. Maria]'), Brahms's chorale preludes were, it seems, composed in memory of Clara Schumann, who had died shortly before. It must not be thought, however, that the English have no home-grown musical fodder. Three carols on traditional tunes are offered here: The Sans Day Carol from Cornwall, arranged by John Rutter (also a choral conductor, and probably the most popular composer of religious music in England today); The Cherry Tree Carol; and The Truth from Above, a beautiful arrangement of an equally beautiful folktune discovered by Ralph Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire in 1909. This CD presents a broad cross-section of the best, most traditional Christmas music as heard in England in churches throughout the land, and it is sung by one of the finest, most historic ensembles England has to offer - the Choir of St Paul's Cathedral. The listener need not expend any energy worrying about the unbrittanic origin of much of what is sung here; what once may have reeked of garlic or sauerkraut now smells only of Christmas pud and mince pies; and what may have once sprung up in some corner of a foreign field is now thoroughly overgrown with the holly and the ivy that is forever England. Dr. Chris Walton Page revised 25.06.03 |
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