The Marriage of Words and Music for Christmas

At Christmastime, we turn to carols to express the season in words and music. Although some may be traced back for centuries, we rarely sing them any more; most of the familiar ones originated in the 19th century (although Adeste fideles dates from the mid-18th century).

When it comes to choosing carols, we are most likely to prefer the ones we heard as children. Yet there are some that stand out for their almost perfect union between words and music. For Christmas 2018, I would like to present you with first the text, then two different settings, and three different performances, of a particularly lovely carol in order to illustrate my point. First, the text -- by the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, as first published in Scribner's Monthly in January 1872:

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago. 

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain,
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty —
Jesus Christ. 

Enough for Him, whom Cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom Angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore. 

Angels and Archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;
But only His Mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss. 

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.

The meter is as stark as the setting. Even though snow does not normally fall in Bethlehem, Rossetti probably has in mind John Milton's imagery of pure driven snow at the Savior's birth as necessary to cover the ugly sins of mankind (On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, lines 37-44). In the second stanza, she draws on imagery from the Book of Revelation to draw a paradox with the humble circumstances of Jesus' birth. The third and fourth stanzas create similar contrasting images of striking simplicity, while the final stanza expresses the author's own humility when faced with her creator God.

The lyrical form of the poem invited a simple, homophonic setting which composer Gustav Holst gave it in 1906. In doing so, he gave the world a new and wonderful carol. Listen to its beauty -- and to its perfect marriage of music with words -- in this classic performance by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge:






Just three years after Holst's composition, Harold Darke, a young organ student at the Royal College of Music in London, gave the poem another stellar setting, in which again the simple homophony sparkles with cascades of passing tones and unexpected chord progressions that serve to emphasize the purity of the infant Savior amidst his crude, rustic surroundings. Here is a lovely performance of the tune under the direction of John Rutter:





To drive the point home, here is a final performance of the Holst setting (just the first and last stanzas), which I can describe only as sung by an angel (who in this case is the Norwegian soprano, Sissel Kyrkjebø). She is accompanied by the Mormon Tabernacle choir and orchestra.




A blessed and joyful Christmas to all my readers!