This is an old favourite from my shopping centre carolling days back in the 1990s. We always referred to this piece as ‘carols on acid’, because of the trippy key changes, and perhaps also because Berlioz was a 19th century…
Tag: my music
Advent Calendar 23 – Linden Tree Carol
This carol is new to me, but I really like the lilting melody and the slightly archaic lyrics, which seem to suggest gossipy angels with a dubious sense of boundaries. But odd lyrics aside, it’s really very pretty. I hope…
Advent Calendar 22 – Ding Dong Merrily on High
This is a carol that probably needs no introduction – except, perhaps, to note that it really ought not to be sung this fast, but there was a lot of hooning going on on the street outside, and the faster…
Advent Calendar Day 21 – In the Bleak Midwinter
I’ve always loved this carol, mostly for its gorgeous lyrics. I can never decide which tune I love more, but since I’m not a tenor, for one-woman choir purposes it has to be the Holst version. Today is the summer…
Advent Calendar 20 – Away in a Manger (Normandy tune)
I have loved this arrangement of Away in a Manger ever since I first saw it in the old green Oxford Carols Book. Later editions didn’t include it, I suspect because people sing Away in a Manger to please the…
Advent Calendar 19 – Away in a Manger
A nice, simple one today, because I’m hosting Christmas Dinner for the in-laws… so this was what I could knock off in between shopping and cooking and planning. I know it’s a carol for children, but I’ve always thought it…
Advent Calendar 18 – A Babe is Born in Bethlehem
This carol is entirely new to me, but it looked pretty, and I liked its early music harmonies and dancing rhythm. It’s a traditional German carol, which was harmonised in the early 17th century by Johann Hermann Schein, a composer…
Advent Calendar 17 – Gaudete!
I’m pretty sure I first heard this song in a pub in Adelaide, where my university choir used to rejoice in making up silly lyrics for the verses. Any rhyming couplet with twelve syllables per line would do – I…
Advent Calendar 16 – Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
This is a lovely German carol from the 17th century. I’ve mostly sung it in translation – and there are a lot of translation, my favourite of which contains the line ‘ye oceans clap your hands’. I love the very…
Advent Calendar 14 – Lute Book Lullaby
It’s only a short carol, I thought. I’ve sung it before!, I thought. How hard can it be? I thought. Yeah. I don’t think I have sung it before, actually, or at least, not in this arrangement, and as for…