When you see the title of the English Christmas carol “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” you have to ask yourself the question in the title of this post.
And the answer is: Probably not. Snow in Israel is very rare. I’m posting a picture below of a historic snowfall in Jerusalem in 2013. Normally, though, there are two seasons in this part of the world: the wet and the dry. If Jesus were indeed born in December, the weather could have been cold and wet but probably not snowy.
Mountains turn up all the time in the Bible. They can be places where God interacts with people, such as Mount Sinai where God gave the commandments to Moses to take back down to Israel, or where someone with “clean hands and a pure heart” can meet with Him, or where a chosen few disciples can see the transfiguration of Jesus. Or people can shout for joy from the mountaintops. And a mountain can also be simply a place from which to speak, with the most famous example being that of the Sermon on the Mount: “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.” (Matthew 5:1-2 NIV) Here’s this big crowd, and here’s a high place to sit which happens to be on a mountainside, so Jesus uses it.
You just never know what you’re going to find out when you google something! I assumed (a common action for me) that Franz Biebl was someone who lived several hundred years ago, as the music has a very old-ish feel to me. Perhaps he lived in the 1600’s or 1700’s? And it certainly would never have occurred to me that:
1) the piece has become a favorite of brass bands, particularly marching bands, and 2) the piece was the subject of a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
But I’ll get to the info on these two fascinating facts in a minute.
The choir to which I belong performed this piece only two years after its 2015 premier. The composer, Philip Biedenbender, was a senior at St. Olaf College at the time and a member of the famous choir attached to the school. He’s gone on to build a career, with many other works to his credit. You can visit his website here. Such a great joy to present works by young, up-and-coming artists!
One of the joys of writing the material on this site is that I have an excuse to dive into the meanings of Christmas songs that I’ve been hearing all my life and always vaguely wondered about. “The Little Drummer Boy” certainly falls into that category. I sort of assumed that it fell into the genre of stories about gifts brought to the Christ child, and indeed it does, but there’s a surprising amount to say about it beyond that general idea. Let’s start with its origin. (As I’m writing this post I’m listening to the Pentatonix version; you can access the video below.) The song was written in 1941 by a woman named Katherine K. Davis, an American composer and music teacher. Out of her 600+ compositions she is known today only for this one piece. When first published, the heading included the words “Czech Carol freely transcribed by K.K.D.” However, the original carol has never been found, although there is apparently a Czech traditional lullaby that is sometimes listed as the source even though it doesn’t really resemble the carol. Who knows? And I don’t read Czech, so even if I could find it I wouldn’t be able to tell you what it means!
This is another one of those posts where I may get completely carried away. I’ll try to rein myself in. I want to start out with some info about the composer of the setting I have sung, David N. Childs. He sounds like an extremely busy composer with lots of irons in the fire. I would encourage you to take a look at his professional website, River Avon Productions, just to get a taste of what he’s up to. Interesting little note: he’s married to a laryngologist. Isn’t that like, so cool? Somebody in one of his choirs is having vocal problems? No prob! He can call in his wife to diagnose the case.
When the choir to which I belong performed this piece in our Christmas 2017 concert, we had the opportunity as we have so many times before to publicize the work of a living composer. It’s so great to be able to do this! You don’t just look the artist up on Wikipedia; you get to see what he/she is up to right now. I’m a little tickled to see that Childs is more than happy to fulfill commissions for “video gaming.”
What is the significance of the year 1913 in “Noël: Christmas Eve, 1913”?
At first I vaguely thought that the year must be a historical reference, possibly to World War I. But of course WWI didn’t start until 1914, so that idea was a non-starter, although Europe, particularly the Balkans, was in the middle of a spate of smaller conflicts in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Great War. There is no information about the original poem in any of the biographical information I’ve come across on its author, Robert Bridges. He’s a fascinating character, though, who was England’s poet laureate from 1913-1930 but whose early career was as a doctor. He became a recognized poet only late in life but had always been interested in writing; he originally planned to retire from medicine at age 40 to devote himself to that pursuit. Life intervened, as it usually does, and he was actually forced to retire at age 38 because of lung disease. He lived until 85, though, so he had a good long time to write and produced volumes of poetry, verse dramas, hymns, and literary criticism. His deep Christian faith is reflected in many of his poems.
Several interesting (to me, anyway) questions to be answered about what the angels said to the shepherds on Christmas night.Was the Sussex carol written in Sussex, and the Wexford carol in Wexford?
With this question we are plunged back in to the delightful, charming, and sometimes weird world of traditional Christmas carols, and indeed of folk music in general. Since true folk music, and not someone’s attempt to write something that sounds like folk music, is passed down orally before being written, it’s always pretty much impossible to find the original version, if indeed there is such a thing.
In order to answer this question, we have to look at what was going on in the life of the lyrics’ author and in his times. Unlike many Christmas carols, we have a known author and date for the words. The words are from a poem of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written in December of 1863, when the Civil War was still raging and the outcome anything but clear.