This was always sung at Midnight Mass in Sanford, Maine when I was a boy. The man who sang it had an even more haunting voice. pl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_Q7AFys6bA
pl
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I must have played this a couple hundred times in rehearsals with various soloists over the years, & in all those many times it never loses its poignant, evocative quality.
Thanks for posting Alagna’s soaring version of “Minuit, Chrétiens,” Pat.
Joyeux Noël à tous!
The music written about this significant time of year for those of us of the Christian faith is extraordinary, and was created before tape recorders, record players, digital sound mixing, electrical amplification, microphones, and so forth.
Here is a version with Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7uiqRCW6I8
Thanks for posting this….I love the original version as composed in French by Adolph Adam better than the English “O Holy Night…” However, the most musically thrilling setting of this song I know of is the Swedish version, “O Helga Natt,” as sung by the great operatic tenor Jussi Bjorling. There are many transfers of his performance, here’s one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9cSJel8RD4
pl, INTP,
Tres belle. Merci.
My Congregational church in Orleans on the Cape includes this each year as
well. My good friend and tenor Ian M. does it well. I am a bass, so it’s not in my repertoire.
I’m glad to know that you have some Mainiac in you. Some of my best years were spent living in Brunswick and working with the Bowdoin College students and faculty. They had weekly Jungian lectures too.
Leanderthal, INTJ
Joyeux Noel…….
Classics are best in their original language sung by a native speaker.
Who want’s to hear “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” in Spanish sung by an Italian?
To Col. Lang & honored guests at SST,
Joyeux Noël à tous.
May there come a day when peace truly reigns in the hearts of all who inhabit this rock (or marble as frequent commentator J calls it) we call home…
And now classic rendition from an aspiring artist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL75AdHaV14
Thank you for all the links, truly beautiful. I had not heard Josh Krajak’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s song; I still prefer KD Lang’s version.
Colonel Lang, my husband Simon and I wish you, your family and all the SST readers, a most wonderful Christmas and a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.
I think k.d. set the standard, gives me chills when I hear it, mighta had a damp eye at the last Winter Olympics in B.C. when she did it then
Nancy K, I have a recommendation.
I have a hunch a brand new work, currently running on PBS, “A Christmas Carol -The Concert” may enter the canon. I liked it, my teenage kids liked it, and my six year old niece and her friend liked it. That’s practically a miracle right there.
I also remember this being sung at Midnight Mass, at St. Ignatius. It wasn’t long after that song that my young mind would turn to thoughts of post-mass tourtiere. Dreams of a warm, chatty kitchen table, surrounded by siblings, cousins, ma tante, mon oncle, mom and dad and my Memere, who kept the blizzard of food coming. It was the Maine of my childhood.
I grew up in Brunswick. My Dad taught Philosophy at Bowdoin. Perhaps you knew him?
Merry Christmas
A few years ago I spent a few weeks in Montreal – Mass in Saint Joseph’s Oratory with the Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal singing was unforgettable.
This is them singing Minuit Chretien:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVNgQNN6Ie8
The choir of King’s College Cambridge sang the English version this year as part of their famous Nine Lessons and Carols service:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8NcHR8NuHY
(If you like carols that channel is a good one)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPmWMZxmF8FinTpwOXCqBvw
Peace on Earth to men of goodwill.
Dubhaltach
Thanks for posting and running SST. Merry Christmas to all the Committee! Joyeux Noel a tous.
Dubhaltach,
Also from the King’s service, the Coventry Carol.
(See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFnM8pSsyUU .)
But they sanitise it, and loose the force of its terrifying lines:
‘Herod, the king, in his raging,/Chargid he hath this day/His men of might in his owne sight/All yonge children to slay’.
I would like to suggest a song inspired by the Infancy Narrative of St. Luke. Schubert’s “Ave Maria”. The version by Renee Fleming sends chills up my spine every time I listen to it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBt9yZDslA
In reply to David Habakkuk:
Mr Habakkuk,
It occurs to me that you might like my dad’s site which deals with music in general and choral music in particular.
The main page is here:
http://saturdaychorale.com/
I agree with you about how the Choir of King’s College have sanitised it in that performance of it. A carol dealing with the mass murder of children should give some idea of the horror of the event.
A quick search shows me that dad has three postings dealing with the Coventry Carol:
http://saturdaychorale.com/?s=coventry
There’s a performance by The Choir of Christ Church Oxford, a performance by Libera, and a performance by the Flemish vocal ensemble Collegium Vocale Gent, conducted by Peter Dijkstra.
They’re all pretty good but I have to say that I think the soloist in the Libera performance does manage to convey some of what Croo was trying to put across.
Dubhaltach
Colonel,
Postscript to my reply to Mr. Habbakuk:
First my apologies for posting so many links. Secondly for those who are wondering what on earth Mr. Habakkuk and I are going on about I’ll post this quote which describes the subject of the Coventry Carol:
“As we celebrate Christmas we tend to forget that the Nativity story has very dark undertones. We tend to forget that within a very short time of having given birth that Mary, her husband, and her new-born son were forced to flee in terror from Herod’s soldiers lest Jesus too fall victim to Herod’s murderous pogrom. We tend not to remember the children of Bethlehem who were murdered at Herod’s behest we tend not to remember the anguish and despair suffered by the parents of those children and we tend not to remember that today, December 28th is the the feast of The Holy Innocents – the name by which the Christian churches refer to the babies and toddlers murdered on Herod’s orders. This forgetfulness is relatively new and it was certainly not the case in medieval and renaissance England the source of the carol which is the subject of today’s posting. The Coventy Carol with it’s haunting child-like melody and simple refrain is part of the script for one of the Nativity plays put on over Christmastide as part of the celebrations by the Guild of Shearmen and Tailors in Coventry. These plays the “Coventry Plays” are known to date from sometime before 1392. The plays continued to be put on for nearly two centuries after that date and were so famous and prestigious that English royalty were among the pilgrims who undertook the difficult and unpleasant winter journey to watch them being performed. They were seen by Henry VI’s queen Margaret in 1456, by Richard III in 1484 and by Henry VII in 1492 – the same year in which Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. The plays were finally suppressed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1579. The Coventry Carol’s lyrics date from 1534 (I’ve included the original lyrics and their modern English translation below) and are believed to be by Robert Croo (fl 1534) the melody dates from at least the early 1580s and may have been sung during some of the last performances of the Coventry Plays. You can here it sung below by Libera the soloists are Josh Madine, Ralph Skan, and Stefan Leadbeater.”
Dubhaltach,
I agree the ‘Libera’ version is much more what you want for the carol which treats of the ‘Childermass’.
Your father’s site seems a treasure trove both of music and information. I had not known the circumstances of the creation of the ‘Coventry Carol’. One wonders what those who performed it would have thought, at a time when their old centuries-old ritual was about to be forbidden, and religious war was endemic in Europe.
We used as teenagers to tour local pubs with it and other favourites in the days leading up to Christmas – four of us on wind instruments, and four singers. It was great fun, although frustrating when people kept on asking for ‘Silent Night.’
All,
Last year, exchanging comments with Dubhaltach, I recalled the frustration at people repeatedly asking for ‘Silent Night’ when we were playing carols in pubs half a century ago. We liked playing ‘Oh come oh come Emmanuel’, ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen’, ‘In Dulci Jubilo’, and the ‘Coventry Carol’ – ‘Silent Night’ seemed to us Victorian and hackneyed.
The Shia orphans made out of it something fresh and new.
And then there were the images Brigadier Ali showed us of Christmas in Pakistan, and above all the pictures from Aleppo.
After a long time when the lunatics seemed to have got control of the asylum all over the place, it has all seemed heartening.
As to Joe Scarborough and his like – the kind of rats who now infest the BBC – I am not counting on liars realising they need to be ashamed of themselves, but: never say never.
Merry Xmas to everyone.
Merry Christmas, Colonel!
Here’s the King’s College Choir of Cambridge Nine Lessons and Carols:
https://youtu.be/hNg6Nv1Ey8Y
St. Patrick & St. Anthony’s Franciscan church in Hartford, CT (oldest RC parish in CT) has populated its parishioner choir with symphony and conservatory musicians over the past decade such that now their midnight mass choir service is a stunning example of integrated aesthetic participation in the liturgy which they sustain throughout the year. They also do a fabulous performance of Silent Night. Here’s an example of their rendition The Morning Star:
https://youtu.be/Lz9HExZzUfc
Here’s a Christmas concert from further afield, in Vienna:
https://youtu.be/NnLIMWLs0b8
Colonel Lang, SST;
On this day after Christmas our thoughts and prayers are for the lost of the Red Army Chorus. They are/were always an inspiration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJhB-z5r8bk
Ishmael Zechariah
All:
Around Mosul
http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/iraqis-celebrate-christmas-near-mosul-after-isis-pushed-out-n699991
More modern compositions aren’t bad either, especially by some Finns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukqZhfyQus
David Habakkuk,
Well said. I echo your reaction to the orphan chorus in Beirut. It was moving far beyond the tune itself. Coupled with the images from Christmas in Aleppo and Pakistan, it is heartening. For some reason, I’m reminded of this Robert Ardrey quote from “African Genesis.”
“But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”
All
I note that President Bashar Assad and his wife visited a Christian orphanage on Christmas Day. pl
And yet…
https://sciencehouse.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/are-humans-successful-because-they-are-cruel/
jld,
That was the contention of Ardrey, that we are descended from “killer apes.” I would add that behavior in nature, both in the animal and plant worlds, is quite often what we consider cruel. Sometimes it’s successfully adaptive. Sometimes it’s maladaptive and leads to ruin.