On both Advent Sundays I heard homilies that bewailed Christmas music during Advent. Unfortunately, our Sunday liturgy Advent music all too often features O Come Emanual and On Jordan's Bank. So we don't experience much Advent music.
The Divine Office has a rich repertoire of Advent Music. Just yesterday in the music from the two virtual breviaries that I feature on my blog, Betty and I encountered Advent hymns that neither of us had heard. Betty as a convert has a rich repertory of Protestant hymns.
THE CATHOLIC HYMNAL: “Splendor Paternae Gloriae
” (O Thou, the Brightness of the Father’s glory)
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from their promotional materialls
Finally! A Catholic hymnal that doesn't mimic or “build upon” Protestant hymnals:
Comfort, Comfort, O My People
Tony Alonso - Topic
Lyrics:
Comfort, Comfort, O My People - Songs | OCP
Advent music is there, I have about two dozen CDs of Advent Music. But most of it is never heard at Sunday Mass. So now wonder we appear to be overwhelmed by Christmas music.
Schola Cantorum Of St. Peter's In The Loop, Chicago - Topic - YouTube
One of my favorite CDs is their Advent II CD
Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending - YouTube
especially
Schola Cantorum Of St. Peter's In The Loop, Chicago - Topic
726 subscribers
One of my favorite Weston Priory CDs of Advent Music can be found here.
Go up to the Mountain - YouTube
My favorite from the CD
They have also posted the lyrics which can be found on Google
Thanks Jack. These are lovely. I especially like "Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending".
ReplyDeleteThe music edition our parish uses actually does have a much wider selection of Advent hymns than the ones which normally get used. The problem is getting one's choir to do them. Mine seems to be reluctant to put much effort into learning pieces which at most have a four week window. A few I wish they would try are Come Divine Messiah, The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (the tune of Stuttgart rather than Hyfrydol). They are doing Beyond the Moon and Stars, which I don't much like, but I did talk them into "Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming" for the third week of Advent last year. We did it as a duet, with me doing the alto and one of the leaders doing the soprano. A previous year I played "There is No Rose of Swych Vertu" as an instrumental solo on Dec. 8. It isn't hard and has a nice medieval lilt to it.
It seems like the Protestant Advent hymns usually come from a more high church background such as the Anglicans. My husband said the Evangelical church he grew up in didn't really do Advent.
For Advent listening you really can't beat Handel's Messiah. My hometown used to do the Christmas part of it as a community effort on a fairly regular basis during Advent. I can remember going to one of the rehearsals with my mom as a child. Then later my two sisters and I took part in it. Usually the high school vocal music teacher would direct it, and the very accomplished Methodist organist would accompany it.
ReplyDeleteA Washington DC tradition is the Kennedy Center’s FREE sing- along Messiah. It’s first come, first serve for tickets and is great event. It will be streamed also.
Deletehttps://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/millennium-stage/2022/december/messiah-singalong/
I rather like these new Advent hymns. But I have to come clean - I never paid much attention to what hymns were used during Advent. And except for O Come Emmanuel (which I like) I have no idea what they were. I prefer Christmas music to what I (don’t actually) remember of Advent hymns. . So it’s not a source of angst for me to hear it during Advent. I decorate my Christmas tree early too.;)
ReplyDeleteBut I’m curious now. Are these Advent hymns meant to be sung by the choir alone or are they meant for the congregation to also sing? I like those here, but it seems to me that they are for the choir only. Which is fine. They are nice to listen to.
I think "Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending" and "Deep Into the Stillness" are quite singable by a congregation. So are the ones I mentioned in my first comment. I don't know about Splendor Paterniae Gloriae. The barrier to many of them is a lack of familiarity to a lot of people. People like to sing what they know. But as you say they are nice to listen to, and I think it is fine to use them as choir pieces. Our parish has the Polish Kolendy for one of the Masses after Christmas. I doubt if there is one person in twenty who could still sing the words.. But they enjoy listening to them. My Glory 'n Praise choir even does a couple of them. Some long-ago nun wrote them out phonetically on sheet music.
DeleteI've been studying Polish on Babbel. The grammar is horrific. But I'm 95% on the pronunciation. I could sing them easily and I can pronounce from Polish text but I'm still not up to attending the Mass in Polish at my parish.
DeleteI’ve never heard of a mass in Polish in my area so have never heard Polish Christmas carols. Katherine, is your parish predominantly Polish heritage Catholics? There might be a Polish parish in Baltimore.
DeleteStanley, when our son was getting married in Poland I signed up for a Polish conversation class in DC at the Polish Cultural Center. I wanted to be able to greet my daughter in law’s grandparents in Polish with basic phrases. I realized quickly that it wouldn’t work for mr because of my hearing loss. But my two classes convinced me I wouldn’t nail the pronunciation anyway. I’m impressed that you are 95%!
Anne, we lived with my grandmother when I was growing up so I heard Polish spoken and was able to understand a lot. That early exposure probably put those sounds in my brain. I think I picked up some grammar but Polish is murder that way. No articles but the nouns have masculine, feminine and neuter endings. I've a way to go even with my childhood exposure. You get points for even trying Polish.
DeleteI tried to learn Welsh one time. It was fun, and I love the grammar puzzles of highly inflected languages. I learned a couple songs phonetically. But having Welsh genes gives you no edge in speaking it.
DeleteA Welsh friend told me that, just to make it extra confusing, there are four distinct dialects of Welsh in a country about 1\10th the square mileage of Michigan.
I imagine Polish has quite a number of regional dialects and big linguistic influences from German, Russia, and maybe Scandinavian?
Based on seeing Welsh on signs, menus etc when we were there it seems to me almost as incomprehensible as Polish. Both seem to use a whole lot of consecutive consonants in their words.
DeleteStanley, I studied Latin for four years. Later I studied German for Reading Comprehension for my job. It helped me with understanding the written language in publications I reviewed for my work (to determine relevance to my research - if relevant I send them to the translation dept because technical economic documents were way over my head) but since they didn’t bother trying to teach the sounds, it was no help to me in Germany when listening!
Both German and Latin both have declensions for nouns and conjugations for verbs. They also have different endings for masculine and feminine, along with different endings for the accompanying modifiers. And different endings depending on the role noun plays - subject, object, indirect object, possessive etc.. The verbs are also conjugated. On top of everything else sentence construction was very different. I am not a natural linguist. I had a friend who could speak, read and write 7 languages. My daughter in law is completely fluent in four (French, Polish, English, and Spanish) and has some facility with four others. She’s pretty good at Russian since her mother was taught Russian growing up in Poland during the Russian occupation, and one of her aunts by marriage is Russian. She was exposed a lot to Russian via her mom’s family.
I have good reading comprehension of French, but am not fluent when speaking because of grammar, and listening is the hardest of all unless they really slow down. When I listen to my d-i-l speak to her three young sons full speed in French they understand her perfectly and I only catch words here and then.. The young boys (5 and 3) switch from English to French without missing a beat, and she is now teaching them Polish. The youngest is 18 months and understands both English and French but he doesn’t really talk yet. I can handle everyday living tasks in French, but a discussion of politics or history or religion would be over my head in conversation. I can read articles on those subjects though. Trying to learn a new language as an adult really is hard. I’m sure just hearing Polish when you were growing up helped a lot with the sounds.,
Apparently Polish also declines their nouns as well as changing for masculine and feminine. Latin and German have nightmare grammar rules too!
We don't have Mass in Polish, just the Christmas hymns for the Kolendy service. The parish was originally Polish, but by now everyone is third or fourth generation. There still are quite a few Polish last names. What is funny is that there are some Latino/Polish families now, and you get kids names something like "Carlos Slyzarski".
DeleteI don't know anything about Polish grammar. From the hymns I have picked up a few words here and there.
i do know a little Spanish but am not fluent in it.
Whatever Spanish I know I picked up at Home Depot. Ferreteria = hardware. They seem to start teaching foreign languages in this country right when the brain shuts down natural acquisition. Spanish seems somewhat practical now. When I was a kid, I never encountered anyone Hispanic. Now they're everywhere. I guess that's still scary for some people. I hardly notice. I imagine their are Americans of Hispanic origin who know as much Spanish as I know Polish.
DeleteAnne, one reason I'm studying Polish now is because I anticipate hearing problems at some point. My mother and aunt had hearing decline in their eighties. I seem to follow my mother's health history. Hopefully, my CPAP machine may help.
DeleteSomeone in my Old English group mentioned these Christmas songs that are roughly contemporary with Anglo Saxon times. Jack might be interested for his collection. The first one is nice. Second one just sounds discordant to me.
ReplyDeleteCorde natum ex parentis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8LCKzBIDF0c
Jesus refulsit omnium:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJnlPHqch0