Playlist:
Birjina Gaztetobat (GM) Rasma Bertz and Manya Sadouski 1:55
Jesous Ahatinhia (The Huron Carol) Heather Dale 3:45
Sherburne (While Shepherds watched …) Singers … 1:45
Shepherd’s Song Brian Kershisnik & Steve Vistaunet 4:08
Alleluja, from Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate Sigrid Onegin 3:19
Music notes
Birjina Gaztetobat (Gabriel’s Message) The Anglican priest, antiquarian, eclectic scholar and prolific writer Sabine Baring-Gould was also a folk music collector. He discovered this Basque folk song, thought to be from the 16th century, in an obscure ethnomusical academic study that had been commissioned by the French Minister of Public Education.
He is often credited with having translated the old song it into English however it is clear that he was only claiming credit for having written new lyrics for the old melody, as evidenced by having it first published in an 1892 hymn book called Modern Christmas Carols. But his English words certainly do have courtly, medieval-sounding language:
The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.
'All hail' said he, 'thou lowly maiden Mary,
most highly favoured lady.' Gloria!
The Basque language is completely different from Castillian or Spanish and is the only remaining language in southwestern Europe that predates the Romanization of the region. The actual translation of the Basque words is basically the familiar prayer Hail Mary.
It is performed here in the original Basque by Rasma Bertz and Manya Sadouski and is from Rasma’s 2010 CD Winter’s Light. She is a Salt Spring Island gal who has since moved to Aberystwyth, Wales, received an MA in Archival Administration, and now works as an archives consultant (mostly doing Welsh genealogical research) and as a side-gig is an artist, photographer and craftsperson (especially, old book repair and bookbinding.)
Jesous Ahatinhia (The Huron Carol) The song that most of us know as The Huron Carol was collected in 1794 by the Jesuit missionary, Fr. Étienne Thomas de Villeneuve Girault. He got it from the oral tradition of the few remaining Huron people who had relocated to Lorette, near Quebec City, to live under the protection of the French. Although it was sung in the Wyandot language he recognized the melody as being similar to a 16th century French noël, Une jeune pucelle (which we now know was actually a translation of an Italian folk carol that had been set the French drinking song melody, Une jeune fillette.)
From the Huron’s oral history Fr Girault learned that the song had been written for them by an early missionary, Fr. Jean de Brébeuf, and was able to piece together that the song had probably been written in 1642, or about 150 years before he heard them singing it. Brébeuf had been a language scholar and was fluent in the both the Wyandot language and Huron culture. The Huron passed important historical knowledge from generation to generation through songs. He would have recognized that the Huron people were more likely to accept his missionary teachings if they learned about Jesus in the form of a song.
The connection to Fr. Brébeuf caught de Girault’s attention: Jean de Brébeuf was a highly-venerated martyr who had been killed by the Iroquois along with many of the Huron people in 1649. Their massacre was part of the internecine Beaver Wars caused by territorial disputes stemming from overharvesting by both sides of fur-bearing animals to meet European demand. So he wrote down the words as he heard them, along with his own translation into simple French.
The story would end there, since Fr. Girault never published his finding, but his notes were found in his papers after his death. Again the connection to Fr. Brébeuf caught people’s attention since he was being considered for sainthood (and indeed was canonized in 1930.) The song was given a new poetic translation into French by Paul Picard, an Indian notary and Wendat Huron Chief, and one of the last people in his generation to speak the Wyandot language fluently.
Jumping ahead a bit, according to recent analysis by Dr. John Steckley, an authority on the Wyandot language, Picard’s was not really a translation of the true content of the song but rather reflected his own interpretation and religious views. But that is the version of the song that was published in Ernest Myrand's song collection Noëls anciens de la Nouvelle-France published as an ancient oddity in 1899.
The song didn't achieve significant fame until 1926 when a Canadian reporter and poet, Jesse Edgar Middleton, found it in Myrand’s songbook and gave it his own very poetic “translation” from the flawed French version. Like the original, it puts the Nativity story into the cultural context of the native people, but it adds its own English romantic period flourishes and “noble savage” imagery.
That English version of the song undoubtedly now has international appeal and shows signs of being enduring classic while so many very good old Christmas carols have fallen by the wayside. But at this point it is fair to question whether it is time to consider return our Canadian Christmas song masterpiece to its roots by singing it in its original form – with Brébeuf’s original words in the Wyandot language or with a more accurate poetic translations of those words into French and English.
That is what Toronto singer and musician Heather Dale does here, with two verses in each language including using a new English translation by Father H. Kierans. It is from her 2004 album this endris night. Actually, I recommend that you watch her sing and dance it here on YouTube, which includes it being performed in American sign language by Lisa Mahabir.
First Nation performers are using the more accurate translations to re-imagine this historic song in the context of their own languages and cultures. Dr. John Stuckley’s non-poetic but literal translation of the song can be found here:
Sherburne (While Shepherds watched…) As I mentioned yesterday, another of my musical interests is sacred harp harmony singing (aka shape-note or fa-so-la singing). This type of hymnody has remained popular in the southern US states since before the Civil War, but it is making a revival across the US and it is even going international. Among the best videos of sacred harp singing on YouTube are those from Ireland, and by far the most useful website for learning the songs and their parts is one from Bremen in Germany (where they describe this kind of music as “a cappella heavy metal.”)
The sacred harp singing movement is unlike the old travelling camp meetings in that it is very egalitarian. The four parts – treble (soprano), alto, tenor, and bass – sit around a hollow square. The tenors usually have the melody. There is no single song leader – that role is rotated among the participants who want to do so (which is almost everyone.) When the singing starts each person in turn goes into the centre and announces a song number from the song-book, and if it is a long song indicates which verses they will sing.
One of the experienced singers, usually a tenor, then gives each part their starting notes and the singing begins, with the leader setting the pace with up-down arm movements. If anyone doesn’t feel comfortable leading, no problem: They can elicit help from an experienced singer who will join them in the centre of the hollow square to “assist” in leading the song, and actually the nominal leader who chose the song just follows along like everyone else.
As in this archival recording, people first sing the note shapes (fa, so, la and mi) as the first verse, and they usually only sing one or two lyric verses so that more people can have a chance to choose and lead songs. Everybody sings, as John Wesley once instructed, “lustily and with good courage.” (Some say that it sounds like each side of the square is competing with the others to be the loudest.) It is really an experience to be in the midst of 100 or more people singing in such a way! The heart of sacred harp singing is participation, not performance.
You can try it yourself at home using the online resources I mentioned above. On your computer or device open this song from the Bremen website. Then select your part from the black box on the right of the screen. Click it and then sing along with the MIDI robot using the words that accompany the musical notation. (They are th first verse of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night.)
Try it a couple of times. Then, keeping the notes for the song on your screen, go here and start the video and sing along with the Irish. Tip #1; the first time through when they are singing the notes you can just sing la la la. Tip #2; the four dots at the end of the musical notation indicate a repeat to the dots on the middle of the top half of the musical notation.
You can also sing along with the version that is in this posting because it is the same song and arrangement - called Sherburne. Folk music collector Alan Lomax recorded this for the Library of Congress National Archives from a convention (what sacred harp singers call any multi-day singing gathering) held in Fyffe, Alabama in 1959. I got the recording from the CD Songs of Christmas from the Alan Lomax Collection, published by Rounder in 1998.
The familiar lyrics are an accomplished paraphrasing of Luke 2:8-14, written in 1700 by English poet laureate Nahun Tate. At the time, only words from the bible could be sung in C of E churches (usually, just psalms) and only authorized translations could be sung. For many years Watts’ poem was the only nativity story song that was authorized. That is why there are so many old choral arrangements for WSWTFBN. This arrangement was written in 1783 by Daniel Read, a Connecticut comb-maker and former Continental army private.
Shepherd’s Song Singer-songwriter Brian Kershisnik and pianist Steve Vistaunet have been making music together since they were young children. According to some of their friends they still haven't properly grown up since their day jobs are as professional artists, and they still practice their music in Steve's basement before an audience of action figures.
This song is from their self-published 2017 debut album Tiny Bicycle Parade. I got it from #2 in a series of charitable fund-raising albums called Merry Christmas, Provo published that year by the City of Provo, Utah.
Alleluja, from Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate This is a 1928 (or earlier) recording by the Franco-German contralto coloratura singer Sigrid Onegin. Acording to a 1991 review of a reissue of some of her recordings in Gramophone Magazine:
There is probably no more beautiful contralto voice on record than Onegin's, and equally none with a more extensive upper range or greater technical accomplishment. For a full picture of her work it would be necessary to include something deep-toned such as ''O schone Jugendtage'' from Der Evangelimann …
Here she is singing Mozart's Alleluja, which is usually sung by soprano divas to show off their stuff. The piece itself is the fourth movement in a motet that the seventeen year-old fan-boy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote in 1773 for his favourite castrato singer, Venanzio Rauzzini.
I can’t recall where I got this track from, but it was obviously recorded in the acoustic era before electric microphones. The music was sung into a large sound-catching cone which funneled the soundwaves down to be mechanically etched onto a wax disc, which in turn was used to make a metal master disc for pressing 78 rpm records. In other words, basically using the same original recording process that Thomas Edison had invented in 1877 (except in this case it was shellac on a disc because Onegin only recorded for the Victrola company.)
Sampler-making recollections
Again, I don’t have any strong recollections about my thoughts while making the 2017 Sampler. By that time I was really in the groove for making my compilations on CD. This one is notable by not having the usual three-movement structure or any thematic emphasis. If I ever began with a particular structural concept it was lost as I went from draft to draft deleting selections I wasn’t satisfied with and replacing them with new ones, and shuffling songs around to get more pleasing transitions. If that had happened I think I would remember it. More likely, it was intended to be a “Christmas stocking” grab-bag of Nativity music from the beginning.
By this time (as now) I always had a lot of good songs in my nativity music candidate files, which are separated as Nativity–vocals, Nativity–instrumental, and Nativity–relaxing (for “lullaby” samplers.) All the songs in the files are there because I think the rendition is good enough for future inclusion in one of my samplers. Anytime I was making a sampler and decided to drop a song from a draft I would ask myself whether it was because it just wasn’t right for that year’s sampler or if it was because I was getting tired of listening to it. If it was the latter, the track would be deleted from the candidate file as well. An important criterion for songs to be in my candidate files is that they can’t become boring from repeated listening.
When I am listening to Christmas or Solstice albums, or midwinter songs that I acquire in some other way, I rather informally grade them in my mind. Most of my new acquisitions have no songs that I consider worth ripping as MP3 files onto my computer. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad Christmas albums. It might be because they include only the “Christmas favourites” and I already have lots of other good renditions of the same song and know that the new ones would never be chosen to make it onto a sampler. If a whole album seems hopeless for my purposes, even if I buy it full price, I save it until early December to bring it down to put on the give-away table in my apartment building’s laundry room.
If the album has useable songs or tunes I put usually listen to the whole album twice before putting it into my pile for ripping, although “listen to” may be putting it too strongly. I often skip ahead as soon as I recognize that a track does not meet my exacting standards for inclusion in a candidates files. I estimate that of the full-price albums I buy new, I get an average of only one or two songs that I consider worth ripping. The inexpensive used albums that I find and buy on speculation have a far worse yield rate, usually with no candidates.
But, of course every so often I get a real gem of an album that gives me perhaps 5 or 6 candidate songs or tunes. They won’t all be used. In general, I prefer not to use more than three selections from any given album, and even then, I prefer to spread them out over time. One of the main purposes of my samplers is to support the creative people who make the music by introducing more people to their creations. Including more would be fair to the creators. But since the advent of streaming and YouTube I am beginning to reconsider that policy for the future, especially if the singer or group is no longer is no longer performing, the CD is either no longer in print, or if the rendition of the song or tune is already up on YouTube.
Of the selections that I do save into a file, a few are in the top “Wow, that’s fabulous!” grade. Those are the ones that I am most eager to share with people, and for that reason sometimes they even sneak onto samplers for which they do not really fit the theme. More likely, I save them for exactly their right setting. My opening or closing tracks on samplers often come from this category. You are getting a disproportionate share of this grade in this year’s retrospective samples-from-the-samplers.
The next grade are also songs that I really like and know that I will use someday. Since my standards are high I have to find them pretty enjoyable to be considered to be candidates. The third are songs that I consider to be “good enough” in themselves but also have a potential use for a special purpose. For example, a song that begins quietly but builds to a crescendo, or vice-versa, can be useful to aid in transitions. Or the song might be good for illustrating a point that I may want to make in my text someday.
Finally, there are many others that do not make the cut for being ripped as MP3s in my computer files as candidates but still might someday prove useful for a sampler, or a whole album might be entertaining for my own listening but does not contain any stand-out songs or tunes. That is why I save all of the albums from which I do find something worth ripping, and even some of the ones that yielded nothing for ripping, in my album collection.
Sometimes I re-listen to albums just to hear if I missed something. Or when I am compiling a sampler I have a particular need, such as one by a performer who has a particular song or a style I know would fit a niche. I have Postit notes on the albums identifying which selections I have ripped and the track numbers of the best ones that didn’t make the cut the first time around.
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