Playlist:
* Gesù Bambino Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkening 3:35
* Personent Hodie Maggie Sansone 1:50
* The Apple Tree Theatre of Voices 2:20
* God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Loreena McKennitt 6:40
Music notes:
Gesù Bambino was written in by the Italian-born and trained organist Pietro A. Yon (1886-1943.) He wasn’t just any old organist. After a brief stint as an assistant organist at St. Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican he was head-hunted by St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan, New York City. There he eventually rose to become the head organist and music director for St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In 1921 Pope Benedict XV appointed him “Titular Organist” of the Vatican, an unprecedented honor.
Composing was a minor sideline for Yon and this familiar carol was his biggest hit. He wrote it in 1917. It was written in Italian even though that was ten years after he had moved to New York, with a Latin refrain line adapted from Adeste Fidelis (O Come Let Us Adore Him.) The English version sung here was written by Frederick Martens and is not a direct translation. This rendition is sung by the great American soprano Kathleen Battle accompanied by the classical guitarist Christopher Parkening and is from their 1996 Christmas album Angels’ Glory.
Personent Hodie This is a Christmas carol in even the most narrow definition of that term. Its earliest documentation is from a 1360 manuscript in Germany. It is believed to be a musical parody in honour of St. Nicholas of a 12th century liturgical song, re-written to be sung during the topsy-turvy day during 12 day Christmas holiday when choristers led by their "boy bishop" traditionally displaced the senior clergy. In 1582 it was also included in the important Finnish compilation Piae Cantiones – full name Piae cantiones ecclesiasticae et scholasticae veterum episcoporum (pious ecclesiastical and school songs of the ancient bishops.) This hammer dulcimer version of its melody is from Maggie Sansone’s 1988 Sounds of the Season album.
The Apple Tree The first known publication of the poem that became the lyrics for this song, also known as Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, was in August 1761 in The Spiritual Magazine published in London England. There it was identified as having been submitted by “R.H.” who has since been identified as Richard Hutchins, a Calvinist Baptist clergyman then in Northamptonshire. He contributed it to the magazine but he was not necessarily its author. An undated broadsheet containing it has been found that could be from as early as 1730. Such printed broadsheets were usually song lyrics, so the original poet may have been an unknown songwriter. The full text of the poem is shown in its Wikipedia entry.
The poem would likely now be long forgotten but it was re-published in various collections of poems suitable to become hymns or spiritual songs, one of which is where the Vermont-based tavern-keeper (and part-time music teacher and choirmaster) Jeremiah Ingalls (1764-1838) found it and in 1805 created this 4-part harmony setting for the words. Ingalls had no training in classical harmony theory so his arrangement was more in the rough-hewn style of pub-singing (which I love!) For comparison, the late composer and music historian Elizabeth Poston, author of The Second Penguin Book of Carols, arranged this much more refined version.
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen This is Canadian harpist/singer Loreena McKennitt’s version of one of the most famous Christmas carols of all time. It is from her out-of-print 1995 mini-album a winter garden and I doubt that you have ever heard the carol performed like this before.
I have a special fondness for this song because there seems to be something about it that brings out the best in musicians and singers. Performers usually try to put their own personalities into their renditions of the familiar Christmas songs, or bring something new and different to their interpretations, hopefully while still being respectful of people’s expectations. Sometimes the results are cringe-worthy! But I have never heard a bad rendition to God Rest Ye Merry (and I have been keeping my ears alert for a bad one ever since I first noticed that anomaly about 20 years ago.) That doesn’t mean that all of the versions are especially good; just that it seems to be a hard song to screw up.
The song itself is quite old and is widely credited to the 16th century night watchmen of London, called the Waits. Before the days of policemen, waits would roam the dangerous streets of the city in groups – part vigilantes and part bodyguards who would escort people home for a tip. The song apparently became widespread through England some time ago because many local variants have been collected from around the country. In folklore study methodology that suggests that the song was widespread before the advent of broadsides with printed words, let alone Christmas carol songbooks.
Sampler-making recollections
1998 brought a return to the Nativity theme, enabled because of the additional albums I was collecting. Compiling the medieval segments in the 1997 sampler had drawn my attention to the fact that much of our familiar Nativity-oriented Christmas music is quite old, and that there is a wealth of largely-forgotten Christmas music that is still quite entertaining.
I also developed an appreciation for the original meaning of a song being a “carol”, which has nothing to do with it being a song for the Christmas season. In Tudor times religious (and other) lyrics were set to then-popular French carole dance melodies. This inclination to set (non-liturgical) Nativity lyrics to lively melodies continued long after the original medieval carole dances were forgotten.
I also was beginning to develop an appreciation for the differences between performing early music in a style that sounded to my ears like it is authentic to its times, and performing it for modern audiences using more contemporary arrangements and instrumentation. For this sampler I focussed on older songs and tunes that were performed in what I thought was a (more or less) authentic historic way and I saved the more modern sounding ones for 1999.
