What Sweeter Music Than a Carol?

It seems to me there is no sweeter music than Christmas carols, especially the older ones—and by older ones I mean the really older ones, Medieval and Renaissance carols.  In the words of the 1964 edition of the Oxford Book of Carols they are, “songs with a religious impulse that are simple, hilarious, popular and modern…spontaneous and direct in expression;” true folk-poetry, popular, spontaneous and modern because they sprang from the lives that common folk were living right then, hilarious because of their roots in the dance.

But sometimes a really modern Christmas song, meaning twentieth- or twenty-first-century, moves easily beside the older carols.  One such number is John Rutter’s s What Sweeter Music, a setting of Robert Herrick’s 17^th-century poem A Christmas Caroll, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall (sung to King Charles I).

Rutter shortens the poem a bit, modernizes the spelling, dresses it in contemporary musical language, and turns out a carol that sounds ancient and fresh, all at the same time.

Rutter made some judicial choices in his setting of the text, and it’s fascinating to compare the lines he plucked out of Herrick’s poem with the original (Rutter’s selections are in red below):

Chor. What sweeter musick can we bring,
          Then a Caroll, for to sing

          The Birth of this our heavenly King?
          Awake the Voice! Awake the String!
          Heart, Eare, and Eye, and every thing
          Awake! the while the active Finger

From the Flourish they came to the Song.

I.        Dark and dull night, flie hence away,

          And give the honour to this Day,

          That sees December turn’d to May.

2.        If we may ask the reason, say;

           The why, and wherefore all things here

           Seem like the Spring-time of the yeere?

3 .       Why do’s the chilling Winters morne

           Smile, like the field beset with corne?

           Or smell, like to a Meade new-shorne,

           Thus, on the sudden? 4. Come and see

           The cause, why things thus fragrant be:

          ‘Tis He is borne, whose quickening Birth

           Gives life and luster, publike mirth,

           To Heaven, and the under-Earth.

Chor. We see Him come, and know him ours,

          Who, with His Sun-shine, and His showers,

          Turnes all the patient ground to flowers.

I.         The Darling of the world is come,

           And fit is, we finde a roome

           To welcome Him. 2. The nobler part

           Of all the house here, is the heart,

Chor. Which we will give Him; and bequeath

          This Hollie, and this Ivie Wreath,

          To do Him honour, who’s our King,

          And Lord of all this Revelling.

And here is Rutter’s carol:

Rutter sets the first four lines of the “chorus” in the signature carol melody (A), sung in unison by the women, and the three lines of the first stanza, in a new melody (B), sung in two-part harmony by the men, to create his own opening stanza.

He takes the first five lines of stanza 3—set to melody A but with variations—to create the first half of his next section.  And then he continues the rest of Herrick’s stanza 3 with a loose expansion of melody B.  But notice that the men open the section this time, mostly in unison, followed by the women in beautiful three-part harmony, a vocal mirror of his first stanza.

It is only at Rutter’s third section, which encompasses the remainder of Herrick’s poem, that the entire chorus finally sings in four-part harmony, perhaps a reflection of the words “We” and “ours.”  Even though he lumps these final lines together, he follows Herrick’s structure through various vocal combinations: melody A in four-part SATB for “We see Him come;” expanded melody B in four-part SSAT for “The Darling of the world is come;” and then building to the climactic words “honour” and “Revelling” with quickened vocal trading and free variations on both melodies.

Finally a gentle unison repeat by the entire choir of melody A, the most recognizable of the two melodies, with a four-part coda to bring it all to a quiet ending.

What sweeter music?  Old and new, it is all sweet.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside