(updated 12/8/06 and 01/08/2017 )
The Notables
Soprano
Alto
Tenor
Bass
Glory to God in the Highest, with new words by J. Paul Williams, and music by Benjamin Harlan, was written in 1990. The refrain is the canticle of the angels to the shepherds as mentioned in Luke 2:14. The bridge tells the Christmas story. It ends with one stanza of “O come, all ye faithful.”
A Manger Carol is a setting of words written by Michael Cockett in 1973. The music was written in 1985 for the choirs of Bethany United Methodist Church in Bethesda, Maryland.
Silent Night, Holy Night is probably the most popular Christmas song of all time. On December 24, 1818, in the small Austrian village of Oberndorf, Joseph Mohr, the assistant priest at the parish had a six-stanza poem, which he had written two years earlier, and handed it over to Franz Gruber, the acting organist, who that day wrote a suitable tune. The two of them performed it at the Christmas mass that evening, accompanied by guitar, and with choir. The song was well received, and spread throughout Germany. It reached New York by 1839. The most familiar English translation was made by Bishop John Freeman Young, and first published in 1876. This arrangement is by David Schwoebel.
Bell Carol of the Kings combines two popular Christmas carols, “We Three Kings” and the Ukrainian
“Carol of the
Bells.”
Rev. John Henry Hopkins, Jr. (1820-91) was instructor in
church music at General Seminary in New York City. He wrote both words and
music to a song he titled “Three Kings of Orient” for a pageant at the
seminary. There are five stanzas with a common refrain. Each of the three middle stanzas was
intended to be sung by a soloist representing one of the three kings. This arrangement
only uses the first, second, and last stanzas.
In 1916, Mykola Dmytrovich Leontovych (1877-1921), perhaps
Ukraine’s
best-known composer, wrote a winter well-wishing song called Shchedryk, which tells
the story of a swallow flying into a house to proclaim a bountiful new
year. Contrary to popular belief, the song was not originally connected
with
the legend of all the bells on earth ringing at midnight, at the moment of the
birth of Christ. Twenty years later Peter J. Wilhousky (1902-1978) in the
United States arranged the tune and wrote English words for what he titled “Carol of the
Bells,” because the main melody reminded him of the ringing of
bells. In 1947, Mary L. Hohman wrote a new and decidedly more sacred lyric
for the tune. This arrangement uses the first few words of Hohman’s lyric, and
most of Wilhousky’s.
Do You Hear What I Hear? is a novelty song from 1962 by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne telling a modern “legend” of the Christmas event. It has been recorded by many artists, from Perry Como to Whitney Houston. This arrangement is by Harry Simeone.
Another novelty song, this from a child’s view of a particular seasonal custom is Mistletoe, from 1989 by Phyllis Aleta Wolfe. It has, over the years, become a “Notables” favorite.
The Bible does not mention the date of Jesus’ birth, but the early Christians began observing festivals of Christ’s nativity. January 6 was observed in Egypt from as early as the 2nd century. In Rome in the 4th century, the date of December 25 was chosen, perhaps to override a pagan feast observed on or around that day. The two feasts were reconciled by counting from the 25th as the 12 days of Christmas. In the middle ages, it was declared to be a time of peace when warfare was not allowed. (Christmas truces were observed as late as World War I.) A version of the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is known from as early as the 13th century. Various symbolic meanings have been attached to the twelve gifts. And many parodies have been made of the song. We present yet another parody, The Twelve Days Till Christmas, written by Chuck Turner, in its second live performance.
Pat Ballard wrote the words and music to “Mister Sandman” in 1954. The song was recorded by The Chordettes and reached #1 on the Billboard charts that year. It was covered by Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, among others, and became Chet Atkins first hit. Ballard later wrote the lyric to Mister Santa as well.
I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm is a 2000 arrangement by Ed Lojeski of three songs having nothing to do with Christmas, but instead are “cold weather” songs. “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm” was written by Irving Berlin for the 1936 film On the Avenue. “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” has become a popular seasonal song since it was released in 1945 with words by Sammy Cahn and music by Jule Styne. “Button Up Your Overcoat” was written by B. G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson for the 1929 Broadway show Follow Thru; it was made into a film in 1930. (The film was made in two-color technicolor, and is unavailable, hidden in the UCLA film archives.)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas first appeared in the 1944 film Meet Me in St Louis, and sung by Judy Garland to 6-year-old Margaret O’Brien, at what was looking like their last Christmas before they would move to New York. The original version was so melancholy that Judy Garland refused to sing it, so the songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane rewrote it. The current version is altered from the film version, and was made famous by Frank Sinatra. This jazzy arrangement is by Anita Kerr, and contains snatches of several other seasonal songs.
Fanfares and Processional For the Feast of Christmas, arranged in 1984
by Roy Ringwald, is a collection of four traditional Christmas hymns.
In 1739 Charles Wesley published “Hark! how all the
welkin rings/Glory to the King of kings” as one of his Hymns and Sacred
Poems. This hymn was later adapted as “Hark!
the Herald Angels Sing.” The tune was adapted from
Felix Mendelssohn’s 1840 “Festival Song,” written to commemorate
the 400th anniversary of Johann Gutenberg and his printing press.
Mendelssohn thought that the tune should never be adapted for sacred music.
“Joy to the World” was written by Dr Isaac
Watts as part 2 of his “imitation” of Psalm
98, and was originally
titled “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom,” published in 1719 in Psalms
of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. The tune is by the
American composer Lowell Mason (1792-1872). Mason’s original score said “from George Frederick Handel.” However, most of the tune is original
to Mason. Small portions are imitated from Handel’s Messiah: the opening four notes are the same as the
choruses “Glory to God” and “Lift up your heads,” and the
refrain sounds like some of the orchestra part in “Comfort ye.”
“From
Heav’n on High I Come to You” is a
translation of a Christmas hymn by Martin Luther, originally Vom himmel hoch
da komm ich her, which Luther wrote as an entertainment for his family on
Christmas Eve, possibly in 1534. The first part would be sung by a man dressed
as an angel, and the rest would be sung by children as the people’s
response. The first stanza (the only one included in this arrangement) is
from an older song. Part of an early translation of this carol appears as “Balulalow” in Benjamin
Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols.
The tune is also used at the close of Part II of J. S. Bach’s Christmas
Oratorio.
“O Come, All Ye Faithful” is a translation of the
Latin hymn Adeste fideles, written (probably) by John Francis Wade, a
catholic exile from England, in 1743. It was translated into English
around 1840. The verses do not rhyme and are not of consistent length, yet
both the Latin and English versions are quite poetic.
