Carols are much on my mind lately as Master Chorus
Eastside prepares for its Christmas concerts, and I find myself turning
frequently to The Oxford Book of Carols for information and ideas.
It is a venerable publication that has been in print for
decades—first published in 1928—in various editions. It contains hundreds of carols, ancient and
modern, from all over the world, with all sorts of toothsome tidbits concerning
their provenance. And its editors and
contributors encompass some of the finest names in British music: Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Martin Shaw, Percy Dearmer, and Andrew Parrott, among many.
I have two editions, and the preface to my much-thumbed
1964 edition (actually a reprint of Percy Dearmer’s preface to the 1928
edition) contains the most insightful definition of carols I’ve ever come
across. It begins:
“Carols are songs with a
religious impulse that are simple, hilarious, popular, and modern. They are generally spontaneous and direct in
expression, and their simplicity of form causes them sometimes to ramble on
like a ballad."
I love this juxtaposition of images. Take a moment to savor them: simple, direct,
spontaneous, modern, hilarious.
Especially hilarious! How utterly
down-to-earth!
Carols are folk poetry—of the folk—and give “voice to the
common emotions of healthy people in language that can be understood and music
that can shared by all,” as Dearmer so elegantly writes.
He goes on to say, in one of my favorite passages:
“Because [the carol] is popular
it is genial as well as simple…Indeed, to take life with real seriousness is to
take it joyfully, for seriousness is only sad when it is superficial: the carol
is thus all the nearer to the ultimate truth because it is jolly. ”
So as we stand on the cusp of November, and as the
commercialism of the holidays looms on the horizon, listen to the old carols,
the ones that say, “Rejoice!” or “Be glad!” or “God rest ye merry!” As this
joyful Christmastide draws near, pause and listen, go to a carol concert, but
most of all, sing the carols, enjoy their geniality, their simplicity, and
their hilarity. In the words of one of
the wassail songs MCE will perform in December:
Love and joy come
to you, and to you your wassail too,
And God bless you
and send you a happy New Year!
Dr. Linda Gingrich
Artistic Director and Conductor
Master Chorus Eastside
Having converted to Judaism in my early adulthood, I must say that the one thing I have not been able to "let go" from my Christian upbringing is the feeling of pure joy and comfort that singing Christmas carols brings me. Somehow it fills a very basic need - perhaps it is the simplicity and hilarity that you refer to here! Whatever it is, I will be singing those carols (especially those old ones) with pure glee for the rest of my life!
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