FROM THE ANGELS TO A SYMPHONY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 234, 17 December 1943, Page 18

FROM THE ANGELS TO A SYMPHONY

The Wanderings Of A Christmas Carol

6¢ HE first Christmas Carol was sung from the sky, and its inspiring words (though not, alas! its tune) have been preserved." So writes Percy Scholes in ms Oxford Companion to Music, and we can share his regrets, for our acquaintance with the kind of music that might have been heard in Bethlehem 1943 years ago is slight enough. But as a matter of fact, a.song sung by angels has been preserved; the chances are it is the one we want. It came about when thirteen hundred and sixty years had passed since the Holy birth, that a German mystic named Henry Suso "heard the angels singing" (as a fourteenth century writer tells us) and he was drawn into dancing with his celestial visitors. They sang: In dulci jukilo Now sing with hearts aglow! Our delight and pleasure Lies in praesipio Like sunshine is our treasure Matris in gremio Alpha es et O! ‘Since Suso was a German, naturally they sang to him in his own language; but, being good angels, they also put in a few words in the ecclesiastical tongue. We can imagine that Suso lost no time in committing to permanent record the carol that was to wander over the world for centuries:

This tune was recently played over 3YA‘by the Woolston Band, and it will be heard from 2YA after 10 p.m. on Christmas Day in a programme of carols. Two verses will be sung in the settihg by Gesius (1601) and then one verse as harmonised by J. S. Bach. Among peoples for whom Latin is not the ecclesiastical language, this carol is sung to the words "Good Christian men rejoice, with heart and soul and voice." The Song of the Crib Another hundred years passed, and another German committed to paper a little mystery play to be acted round a crib in a church. It contained a carol ("Joseph dearest, Joseph mine, help me cradle the Child divine") which we have all heard at some time. Its opening phrase is the same, in essence, as that of "In Dulci Jubilo" (the notes of the first bar decorate the chord of the key-note slightly differently, but retain the rhythm). This tune can be found in any good collection of carols. The same phrase was used without alteration by a modern composer, Max Reger, in his "Cradle Song of the Virgin Mary," but just as "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine" goes off into a new melody after the first phrase, so Reger’s cradle-song provides yet another sequence, Brahms, in his Holy Cradle Song, Op. 91, uses "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine" almost intact in the viola accompaniment. The Reger

song will be heard on the air this week and next week (see below), and it is a safe assumption that both "In Dulci Jubilo" and "Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine" will be frequently sung by child and adult carol singers all over New Zealand during the same week. Perhaps not so well known is an old Flemish carol, "A Little Child on the Earth has been Born," of which an arrangement by the Dutch composer Julius Rontgen can be seen in the Oxford Book of Carols. The notes that fit the first line are again the unmistakable phrase. Thus Henry Suso’s dream has been travelling afield-the joyous little phrase has the character of the message it is associated with; it knows no boundaries. And So To France But is this the end of the matter? Look at a French Easter carol-‘Cheer up friends and neighbours, now it’s Eastertide’’- which is also in the Oxford Book of Carols. The opening phrase is what you would expect of a French var-iant-more concise, much neater. The whole phrase is condensed into half the measure-but it is still the little fragment that the angels sang to Henry Suso. This carol is not unknown in New Zealand. So the tune has travelled west, and adapted itself to a song for a different occasion, but not of a different character. It would be natural to ask whether it went any further, and an old church-gallery book from Dorset, England, provides the answer. In it the Rev. L. J. T. Darwall discovered the tune and words of the ‘"Yeomen’s Carol" ("Let Christians all with joyful mirth .. . Now think upon our Saviour’s Birth"). The opening phrase:

The first bar differs in the way the notes of the chord are distributed, but not in rhythm. The second is sstill identical with In Dulci Jubilo, and the other four songs mentioned. Perhaps the "Yeoman’s Carol" isnot a regular favourite here, but what New Zealanders with an ear for music cannot remember the opening strain ‘of the "Pastoral Symphony" in Handel’s Messiah? The first bar is identical with the first full bar of the "Yeoman’s Carol" (above) which in its turn is only another way of putting the notes of In Dulci Jubilo (the second bar of the Handel piece extends the phrase of the second full bar shown above, making each note a dotted crotchet). And where, may we ask, did Handel get the tune? In Rome, where "pifferari" (Bagpipers) from Calabria in Southern Italy play it every year-at Christmas time. You may see pictures of them in the Oxford Companion to Music. Germany-Flanders-France — Dorset -Calabria. Did it stop there? Let us look at the BBC Listener for June 24, (continued on next page)

(continued trom previous page) 1943, where A. E. F. Dickinson reviews the score of Vaughan Williams’s new Fifth Symphony. He quotes a tune from the last movement which he says "seems to fill the whole world with its song of goodwill." Dickinson makes no reference to the possible, source of the tune, though he must have known that Vaughan Williams was the music editor of the Oxford Book of Carols. So why did he talk of a "song of goodwill" unless he knew that the tune he quoted there was identical with the opening of the "Yeoman’s Carol’ printed above (except for an ornamental note in the second half of the phrase) and was therefore in turn a brother of Handel’s shepherd’s tune, and a cousin of In Dulci Jubilo? Or could it have been an intuitive glimpse of the real origin of a tune we had thought to be only six centuries old? Did Dickinson’s chance use of the word "goodwill" prove an inner truth about it that would have made old Henry Suso -who spun a tale of angels to give a mystic air to his verses-sit up in his grave with his hair on end?

MARSYAS

"In Dulci Jubilo’--2YA, Christmas Day, 10 p.m. (approx.). "Cradle Song of the Virgin Mary" (Reger)-2YA, Friday, December 17, 8.0 p.m., and 3YA, Friday, December 24, 8.29 p.m. "Pastoral Symphony" (Messiah)-2YA, Christmas Day, 8.0 p.m., and 3YL, Christmas . Day, 8.0 p.m.