Tag Archives: Christmas music

Beloved Christmas carols: O Little Town of Bethlehem

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Bethlehem. O little town of Bethlehem history

City of Bethlehem, in Palestine from Views in the Ottoman Dominions, in Europe, in Asia, and some of the Mediterranean islands (1810) illustrated by Luigi Mayer (1755-1803), via Creazilla

Plenty of Christmas carols emphasize the regal and supernatural aspects of the day or evoke the emotions that Christians have long felt when contemplating the birth of Jesus. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” emphasizes the quietness surrounding the birth of the Christ child in a little town. No one noticed except angels, who in this text don’t appear to people.

American preacher Philips Brooks visited Bethlehem largely because of exhaustion after the Civil War. Once he wrote the text, he asked his organist Lewis Redner to compose a tune for it. They lived to see what they thought was just a carol for the children in their Sunday school became nationally famous. Later, it became known around the world. Continue reading →

Symphony no. 3, Rhenish, by Robert Schumann

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Dusseldorf, Rhine

Düsseldorf and the Rhine / between 1890 and 1905, via Wikimedia Commons

In all, Robert Schumann composed and published four symphonies. The last of them in order of composition is what is known as the Third Symphony, or Rhenish Symphony. His publisher had declined to accept the second of his symphonies. Schumann revised it in 1851 and so it was published as his Fourth Symphony.

The Rhenish Symphony acquired its nickname from letters to his publisher and some friends. In them, Schumann spoke of the Rhine River as his inspiration. Continue reading →

Beloved Christmas carols: Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming

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Photo: Lo, how a rose e'er blooming

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming: a last rose in the snow in Skandia (photographer’s title and description) /
yooperann via Flickr

No one knows who wrote either the German text or the tune of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” According to legend, a monk near the Rhineland city of Trier found a rose blooming one Christmas Eve, plucked it, and put it in a vase on an altar devoted to the Virgin Mary. The poem “Es is ein Ros entsprungen” may have been written as early as the 15th century, but the earliest extant version appeared in the late 16th century.

At the time, the Protestant Reformation roiled Europe in general and Germany in particular. Catholic and Lutheran publishers issued slightly different versions of the text, paired with the tune we know and love today. I say slightly different, but the change of two lines clearly shows a theological gulf. Just whom does the rose symbolize? Continue reading →

Beloved Christmas carols: The little drummer boy

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Little drummer boy simeone coverThe 19-year stretch between 1932 and 1951 gave us 19 top hit Christmas songs. “The Little Drummer Boy” was written in 1941. When I decided to write about it, I found that hardly anyone knew it existed for 10 years. It didn’t become a hit until even later.

Yet now, we can choose among hundreds of recordings. It started out as a choral piece, but many top vocal soloists have recorded it. Like it or not, it’s hard to avoid hearing “The Little Drummer Boy” throughout December every year. You might even hear it more than once in a day. Continue reading →

Beloved Christmas carols: Mary’s boy child

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black madonna. Mary's boy child

A fresco of a black Madonna and Jesus at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum, Ethiopia / Wikimedia Commons

Most of our sacred Christmas music comes from some European tradition. Most 20th-century Christmas music is secular. “Mary’s Boy Child” is an exception to both generalities. It might sound like a folk song, a Caribbean equivalent of a Negro spiritual, but it was composed by Jester Hairston.

Besides being a fine piece of music and a lot of fun to sing and listen to, it serves as a correction to the pernicious thought that somehow Jesus was a white man and that Christianity is somehow a white person’s religion.

Jesus came into the world for all of us. His skin color as a human hardly matters, but he probably most nearly resembled today’s Arabs. Continue reading →

Beloved Christmas carols: Thou didst leave thy throne

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Adoration of shepherds / Murillo. Thou didst leave they throne

Adoration of the Shepherds / Bartolomé-Esteban Murillo, ca. 1650

If you ever think of the Industrial Revolution, you might not associate it with the Sunday school movement, but the intersection of the two accounts for the familiar Christmas carol “Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne.” Emily Elizabeth Steel Elliott wrote the text and Timothy Richard Matthews set it to music.

The Industrial Revolution replaced cottage industries where people made items by hand with factories that mass produced things with machinery. Population and people’s average income both grew at an unprecedented rate, but not everyone benefitted. The poverty rate also grew.

Factory owners put children to work for long hours. Development of fair labor practices and safety standards lagged behind the invention of industrial processes by decades.

Two men established a Sunday school for orphans and poor children in Gloucester in 1780. The movement spread throughout England and to the US. It provided the only education many poor children ever got. But the idea of educating the lower classes at all proved controversial. Sunday schools depended on charities for survival. Continue reading →