By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 21, 2021 | One of the joys of the Christmas season is to return to the music of Christmas, particularly Christmas carols. Churches that devote a night to singing Christmas carols are always popular. Churches will benefit if they devote an entire night’s service to congregational singing of Christmas carols.
It is glorious, and inspiring.
Yet you wonder how this music of the season arrived to give so much joy and happiness to others.
We bumped into a site the other day on the Internet, which gives background to many of our favorite carols. Go to https://www.allclassical.org/the-stories-of-twelve-famous-carols/ and read more than we can quote here. It’s from All Classical Portland, Oregon.
This site’s short history: All Classical Portland is Portland’s classical radio station. Established in 1983, All Classical Portland’s mission is to advance knowledge of and appreciation for classical music; to build and sustain culturally vibrant local and global communities around this art form; to reflect the spirit of the Pacific Northwest; and to foster integrity, quality, and innovation in all that we do.
The stations of All Classical Portland rebroadcast the KQAC signal from Portland, launched in November 2001 at their 90.1 FM.
Here’s background on two carols from this site:
“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” reached its holiday prominence by a circuitous route. The tune, which originally had nothing to do with Christmas, was composed in 1840 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), as the second movement of his Festgesang or Gutenberg Cantata. Mendelssohn composed this work for the Leipzig Gutenberg Festival, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the invention of the printing press. Mendelssohn’s cantata, for male chorus and brass ensemble, was sung at the unveiling of Leipzig’s new statue of Johannes Gutenberg.
“Gutenberg, du wackrer Mann, du stehst glorreich auf dem Plan!” (“Gutenberg, you valiant man, you stand glorious on the square!”)
Mendelssohn hoped to publish his Gutenberg tune with English words, but he couldn’t find a text to suit him. In a 1843 letter to Edward Buxton, one of his English music publishers, he explained: “If the right [words] are hit at, I am sure that the piece will be liked very much by singers and hearers, but it will never do to sacred words…”
In 1847, Mendelssohn directed the London premiere of his oratorio Elijah, and one of the alto choirboys was one William Cummings. Little did Mendelssohn know that in the 1850s, Cummings would be the one to attach his Gutenberg tune to a decidedly sacred poem entitled “Hymn for Christmas-Day,” from Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739) by Methodist writer Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the first line of which is, of course, “Hark! The herald angels sing…”
Joy to the World: The text of this carol is actually an adaptation of Psalm 98, from hymnwriter Isaac Watts’s Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719). Watts called the poem “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom,” probably not thinking particularly of Christmas or caroling.
In 1836, American composer and music educator Lowell Mason published the text with a tune entitled Antioch in The Modern Psalmist. Mason attributed the tune to Handel, but nobody’s sure what Handel melody Mason had in mind. It is speculated that the tune was inspired by the choruses “Glory to God in the Highest,” or “Lift Up Your Heads, O Ye Gates,” from Handel’s Messiah, on the tenuous ground that the melodies of both begin with the same four notes as Antioch. It’s also possible that Mason adapted it from a pre-existing anonymous hymn tune, as scholars have found earlier tunes published in America which resemble Antioch.
Thank you, All Classical Portland!
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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