When we think Christmas music, we think of Christmas carols. That’s a broad category, and hard to define. Wikipedia says: “A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, and sometime accompanied by a dance…Today the carol is represented almost exclusively by the Christmas carol, the Advent carol, and to a lesser extent by the Easter carol.”
Festive song? OK, if “festive” refers to association with a festival. The structure, character and mood of carols varies widely, and many of them would not be described as “festive;” but somehow the singers, and the audience, sense whether a particular piece is a hymn, a liturgical movement, a concert work, or a carol. I think singability has a lot to do with it— if the listener imagines having a good time singing along, then it is a carol.
Usually, a carol has a series of verses, each of which is followed by a common refrain. O Come, O Come Emmanuel, which I listed last week in the plainsong category, has become, over time, a carol, in this sense— a series of verses interspersed with a refrain. O Come All Ye Faithful, as well, started out as a Latin hymn, but has come to function similarly, complete with refrains. Philip Stopford’s Lully, Lulla, Lullay, though recently composed, sets the words of a traditional carol, and follows the common form of verses followed by refrain. It is more clearly a “composed” piece than the two preceding carols; its through-composed texture hides the divisions between verse and refrain, and the variations in voicing, as well as the frequent repetition of the refrain, would make it difficult for an audience to join in.
In the Bleak Midwinter, by Gustav Holst, has no refrain, only a series of verses. As such, it is more a hymn than a carol; but it is so well-known and -loved that it is included in the Oxford Book of Carols, with the added note, “This poem, with its tune from the English Hymnal and Songs of Praise, is so much a carol that we feel bound to include it here also.”
Two other carols on our program are also included in the Oxford Book of Carols: Infant Holy, Infant Lowly, a Polish carol translated and arranged by David Willcocks, and Ding! Dong! Merrily on High, a French tune harmonized by Charles Wood. The former lacks a refrain between verses but is otherwise very much a carol; the latter is a classic carol in all respects. We are also singing Maria Durch ein Dornwald ging, a German carol set by Stefan Claas, in which each stanza has two refrains: Kyrie eleison, and Jesus und Maria.
Chorale will also sing what is perhaps the best-known of all carols, Silent Night, in a setting by Stephen Paulus. Paulus regarded himself as an opera composer, and this setting exemplifies his penchant for rich textures, grand statements, and dramatic contrasts. Its impact goes far past our usual experience of the original German carol but does it no injustice. The Advent and Christmas season can easily be seen as a theatrical extravaganza in which everyone participates, and Paulus captures this character wonderfully, without overdoing it.