My friend Shelley at But Wait, There’s More has tagged me on her Christmas Carol meme, and here are my own choices for the Yuletide festival interval, spanning three languages and several centuries.Particular Favourites
In the Bleak Midwinter, Christina Rossetti/Gustav Holst (1905)
Quelle est cette odeur agréable?, Traditional (Baroque)
Il est né le divin enfant, Traditional (Renaissance)
Silent Night (Stille Nacht) Joseph Mohr/Franz Gruber (1818)
Once in Royal David's City, Cecil Alexander/Henry Gauntlet (1849)
Other Favourites
They are not really Christmas carols (or holiday songs), but I am very fond of the following two modern (and exquisite) compositions by British choral composer, John Rutter, and I always play them during Yuletide. How can we honour light, the sacred and the turning year without blessing the Earth and all our fellow travellers on this journey?
All Things Bright and Beautiful, Cecil Alexander/John Rutter
For the Beauty of the Earth, Folliot Pierpoint/John Rutter
Absolutely Not................
Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Wesley/Mendelssohn (1840)
White Christmas, Irving Berlin (1940)
Silver Bells, Livingston/Evans (1950)
The Little Drummer Boy, Davis/Onorati/Simeone (1958)
For an absolutely magnificent (there is simply no other word for it) version of the carol I love best, "In the Bleak Midwinter", visit Joanna Powell Colbert's lovely (beyond lovely - it is sublime) Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal. Her husband Craig Olson's beautiful rendering of the carol reduced me to tears. It was so lovely that I sat here and cried.
In my own turn, I am tagging Endment, Rowan, Maya's Granny and Potato Prints.
4 comments:
Also crying, over here.
Sweetly.
Mercy!
cate, thank you for hyour wonderful list of carols to appreciate/enjoy and carols to avoid. I had to laugh at your list of absolutely not.
...and cry when I heard Craig's version of the Bleak of Night. How beautiful -- and how perfectly apt to this season of dark night and looking to the coming light. . . thank you for shining a light on that song. I'm going to save it on Tim's computer hoping he'll learn to sing it with me. xoxo to you. Blessings in this beautiful winter solstice season
maureen
I used to coax my Mom to sing Noel, when we were washing the dishes together.
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