Day Four - Coventry Carol

I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the Mediaeval Mystery Plays. (Specifically on how they intersect with 20th and 21st century Queer theatre). I love just about everything about them! The fact that they are inarguably both community drama and literature; the way they jump between theatrical and narrative styles - juxtaposing farce and tragedy, domestic and spectacle, ritual and play; the fact that they were suppressed for being too subversive - and now we study them in the ivory towers of academia and perform them in churches, on the BBC...  I've seen them performed in Xhosa and Afrikaans, I've seen them performed dead-pan straight by school boys from Eton and queer as Terrence McNally could make them, in the same theatre at the Edinburgh fringe festival, one after another.

Coventry Carol is from the Coventry version of the mystery cycle, of which only two plays survive into the present. The Massacre of the Innocents in the New Testament is another one of those intertextual bits of the Bible, with parallels in the slaying of the First Born in Exodus; this intertextuality is often played with by the mystery plays - as foreshadowing, or simply as a means of structuring the vast and sprawling biblical narratives that they play with.

There are two musical techniques used in the composition of Coventry Carol which are worth pointing out. The first is the 'picardie third', a major sound in an otherwise minor piece, which here is a note of hope during a tragic incident. The second is the 'false relation', a particularly English quirk of harmony in which two clashing notes sound either closely one after another or simultaneously to create dissonance and tension. I've tried to emphasise both sounds in my arrangement - the strong dissonance of the false relation resolving to the hope of the picardie third.

Hope you enjoy!


Coventry Carol by Jessie Holder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Lully, lulla 
Thou little tiny child
Bye bye lully lullay, 
Thou little tiny child
Bye bye lully lullay

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling
Of whom we do sing
Bye bye lully lullay

Herrod the King, in his raging
Charged he hath this day
His men of might,
In his own sight
All young children to slay!

That woe is me, poor child for thee
And evermore and ay
For thy parting
Neither say, nor sing
Bye bye lully lullay


Lully, lulla 
Thou little tiny child
Bye bye lully lullay, 
Thou little tiny child
Bye bye lully lullay

Day 3 - In Dulci Jubilo

Today's carol is In Dulci Jubilo. Another one that I first sang as a very young child. This arrangement is very heavily based on the John Rutter three part version. The words are 12th century and the tune probably 15th or 16th. The third verse is sometimes attributed as a late addition by Martin Luther.
This is the first thing that I have posted with proper Christian theology of Christ in it - here is Jesus the Redeemer explicitly for the first time. But also - nova cantica, that new song as referenced by the Song of Solomon, and in Exodus. One of the things I love about the Christian bible as literature is the way that it is intertextual - it says what it says by reference and inference. And to be redeemed is to compose and be composed. To make music, or poetry - but oral poetry, to be heard. Macronic text emphasises this idea - here is religion that creates its understanding in the gaps between; where translation fails - the unspoken and the sung.

Hope you enjoy!




In Dulci Jubilo by Jessie Holder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

In dulci jubilo
Let us our homage shew:
Our heart's joy reclineth
In praesepio;
And like a bright star shineth
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O!

Alpha es et O!

O Jesu parvule,
I yearn for thee alway
Hear me, I beseech Thee,
O puer optime;
My prayer let it reach Thee
O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te!

Trahe me post te!

O patris caritas!
O Nati lenitas!
Deeply were we stained.
Per nostra crimina:
But Thou for us hast gained
Coelorum gaudia,

O that we were there!

O that we were there!

Ubi sunt gaudia,
If that they be not there?
There are Angels singing
Nova cantica;
And there the bells are ringing
In Regis curia.
O that we were there!

Oh that we were there!

Day Two - Green Growth the Holly

This is another favourite of mine. The lyrics are a trip around the calendar year, starting and ending with the hope that evergreen trees promise in temperate climates - that spring will return and life be renewed.  The theology of the central line 'the God of life can never die' has in it a beautiful hint of the way English Christianity subverted and incorporated earlier local pagan theologies - this is the theology of Mithras, of Baldr the Beautiful and Herne the Hunter. It makes me even more gleeful therefore that this is attributed to Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of England.

This is the original Renaissance arrangement - there's nothing I could do to improve it. Again, this was recorded in one take per part. I hope you enjoy it!


Green Growth the Holly by Jessie Holder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Please feel free to let me know in the comments if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear me doing as part of this project!

Green grow’th the holly
So doth the ivy
Though winter blasts blow na’er so high
Green grow’th the holly

Gay are the flowers

Hedgerows and ploughlands
The days grow longer in the sun
Soft fall the showers

Full gold the harvest
Grain for thy labor
With God must work for daily bread
Else, man, thou starvest

Fast fall the shed leaves
Russet and yellow
But resting buds are smug and safe
Where swung the dead leaves

Green grow’th the holly
So doth the ivy
The God of life can never die
Hope! Saith the holly

Day One - O Come, O Come, Emanuel

This is a new project for me! Inspired by The Artsy Honker's 12 days of Christmas recording project last year, and an old tradition of mine of making an online advent calender with something creative under each 'door', this year I've decided to make some recordings of Christmas carols and post them publicly over the month of December.  I'm almost certainly not going to manage to post a new recording every day of advent, but I hope to get a good selection of recordings up.

My heritage is Jewish, and I've spent more or less my whole life singing Christian music - I have a complicated relationship with Christmas music that I will maybe go into in more detail as the project goes on. But it comes down to the fact that I love the music of carols and the history of them. I've got a background in early music, and a love of mediaeval and metaphysical poetry and you'll certainly hear those influences through the month.

Today isn't the first of December, but it is the first Sunday of Advent, which seems as good a time as any for this more-or-less agnostic Jew to start this project.

My first recording is my own arrangement of O Come, O Come, Emanuel. This is an advent carol, so an appropriate starting point. I've loved it when I first sang it aged about six, because it has my name in it! I also love the fact that it's a carol looking forward to a promise of the Messiah, rather than one which focusses on birth and redemption - a very Jewish sort of a carol. There's something Jewish in the tune of it as well, despite it's origin in the music of probably French monks some time between the 8th and the 12th century...

The main part of this recording, the tune of the carol, was sung in one take with no pitch reference - I haven't used any pre or post recording tricks to keep the tuning. Yes, that's me singing all the parts. The descant in the final verse is loosely based on the Wilcocks arrangement. There's a few more seconds of silence on the beginning of the track than their should be, if you don't want to listen to silence you can start playing at 0.18...






O Come, O Come, Emanuel by Jessie Holder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

O come, O come, Emanuel
Redeem thy captive Israel
That into darkest drear has gone
Far from the face of God's dear son

Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, thou branch of Jesse, draw
The quarry from the Lion's claw
From the dread caverns of the grave
From nether hell thy people save


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, thou Lord of David's key
The royal gate swing wide and free
Dispel the long night's lingering gloom 
And pierce the shadows of the tomb


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, O come, Adonaï

Who, in thy glorious majesty
From that high mountain, clothed in awe
Gavest thy folk the elder law


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel