December 2024 Cherry Creek Chorale Concert

What does macaroni have to do with the carol “In Dulci Jubilo”?

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Image by Dorothée QUENNESSON from Pixabay–note the correct use of

Picture this: You eat a plate of macaroni and cheese, followed by a macaron cookie, all the while listening to music with a macaronic text and wearing the costume of a macaroni. Have I finally gone completely over the edge, and what on earth does all this have to do with the Christmas carol “In Dulci Jubilo”?

Well, I’ll tell you. No, I haven’t lost it, because all of these macaronical words are related and come, at least indirectly, from the Sicilian word maccarruni, which refers to foods made from some type of paste, either flour based or almond based. (The word “pasta” in and of itself simply means “paste.”) There’s a long, long trail a-windin’ here, with Arabic influences in Sicily resulting in the melding of many North African foods with Italian ones. Here’s a summary from an excellent article in Slate:

The pasta and the almond-pastry traditions merged in Sicily, resulting in foods with characteristics of both. Early pastas were often sweet, and could be fried or baked as well as boiled. Many recipes from this period exist in both a savory cheese version and a sweet almond-paste version that was suitable for Lent, when neither meat nor cheese could be eaten. . . . Out of this culinary morass arises, circa 1279, the word maccarruni, the Sicilian ancestor of our modern words macaroni, macaroon, and macaroni.1

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The Birds that Sing in Christmas Carols

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Image by nathalieburblis from Pixabay

I would challenge you to find any animals in the actual nativity story of the Gospels with the exception of the “flocks” over which the shepherds are watching in the fields. We usually assume that these were flocks of sheep, but there could have been goats too. Other than that, I regret to inform you that those cleaned-up, prettified little animals that show up in manger scenes almost certainly weren’t there—with the exception, perhaps, of some ewes and newborn lambs. So when the little drummer boy says that “the ox and lamb kept time” while he played his drum for the Christ child, we can be quite sure that this is a later interpolation into the story, at least as far as the oxen are concerned.

Regardless of any scriptural basis for animals in attendance, there are surprisingly many carols that include animals, and not just as window dressing. Below is a selection of carols that include birds. (My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is singing a couple of them for our December 2024 concert. Follow the link if you live in the Denver area to get your tickets!)

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Why isn’t the miracle of the oil mentioned in the Hanukkah prayer “Al Hanissim”?

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From the website MyJewishLearning. The hard-to-read text at the bottom of the image says “Illustration in an 1880 newspaper of a Hanukkah celebration at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association at the Academy of Music in New York City. (U.S. Library of Congress)” Isn’t that, like, totally cool?

Whew. I had no idea that the story of Hanukkah was so complicated. My previous posts about this Jewish holiday have for the most part focused on the eight days that the menorah in the Temple at Jerusalem burned from a flask of oil that should have lasted only one day, with the ensuing symbolism of lights and candles, feasting and celebration. (Latkes, anyone?) But the actual Hebrew prayers, including “Al Hanissim”1 recited as part of the celebrations, say nothing about the miracle of the long-lasting oil. Why is that, and when did the oil miracle become part of the story? I will say up front that there are no completely definitive answers to be found here. It’s been fascinating, though, to dig through quite a few sources and see how the subject is handled. Here’s an overview about the holiday as a whole and also what I’ve found out about this particular prayer.2

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What Shall We Give? A Christmas Question

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Image accessed via Pixabay

There’s a whole category of Christmas songs/carols that concern the bringing of gifts to the Christ child in Bethlehem. My own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is singing a less-familiar one, “Son of Maria,” but more accurately “Son of the Mother” (“El Noi de la Mare“), which is also sometimes titled “Carol of the Gifts.” It is labeled as a traditional piece from Catalonia, a region of Spain that has seen its fair share of conflict over its periodic attempts to become an independent nation. I was surprised to see the number of carols (14) listed on Wikipedia as having come from this region; we are also singing the “Carol of the Birds,” which I plan to write about later on this blog. Because this is a traditional folk song, there is no “original” version. Instead, the song would have been passed down orally for generations and then finally written down, but these written lyrics vary immensely. Here’s a simple version used in a medley by the great Karl Jenkins; since it’s not being used as a stand-alone piece it needed to be fairly short. I’ll share some additional wording later in this post.

Son of Maria, Son of Maria.
What shall we give to the Son of Maria?
What can we give him that he will enjoy?
Bunches of grapes we will give to the infant,
baskets of figs for the beautiful boy.

Son of Maria.
What can we give to the Son of Maria?
What can we give to the beautiful boy?
Olives and walnuts and raisins and honey,
cherries and figs and some dates to enjoy.

Son of Maria.
Tampatam tam if the figs will not ripen,
what shall we do if the figs are still green?
Tampatam tam when our sins are forgiven,
Lovely ripe figs will at Easter be seen.
Tampatam tam when our sins are forgiven,
lovely ripe figs will at Easter be seen.

The sheet music says “English words by Carol Barratt after a translation from the Spanish”
Barratt is Karl Jenkins’ wife and a music educator in her own right.

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The Wild and Wacky World of Wassailing

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no image attribution given on the website https://www.manmadediy.com/

Oh my goodness! If you’ve read many of my posts on this site you’re probably familiar with my saying, “Well, I thought this was a simple song . . .” But nowhere would this phrase be more appropriate than it is here, as I attempt to explain the concept of “wassailing” and then apply those ideas to two traditional Christmas songs that are often performed during the holidays, “Gloucestershire Wassail (Wassail, Wassail, All Over the Town)” and “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” with a bonus mention of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which doesn’t directly mention wassailing but which contains wassail-adjacent ideas as you’ll see below.

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Who Are Willie and Robin in “Pat-a-Pan,” Why Do They Play the Instruments That They Do, and Why Can’t the Tenors and Basses Ever Catch a Break?

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Guillô prends ton tambourin (Patapan) - French Children's Songs - France - Mama Lisa's World: Children's Songs and Rhymes from Around the World - Intro ImageLet’s get the two guys out of the way first. Here’s what I found: the names are common in old French carols, where they are rendered as “Guillô” and, well, “Robin.” The French version of “Willie” is pronounced “Gwee-yo.” Robin’s name is “Ro-bɛ̃,” with that funny-looking “e” being fairly nasal and the “n” not really being pronounced at all—it’s just a marker for the nasal sound. Everybody got that? Anyway, I’m sure if I dug around long enough I could discover why these two names are sort of generic, but I’ll leave it at that, because there’s more ground to cover here. You can just figure that Willie and Robin are like Jack and Jill, or Jim and John, or Lucy and Ethel. (But see the note at the very end of this post about the alternate names that Karl Jenkins used in his arrangement of this carol.)

Whatever. On to the author and origin of the song. Didn’t you just assume, if you thought about it at all, that this was a folk song? It’s not, since it has a known author, the poet Bernard de la Monnoye, who lived from 1641-1728. What a

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What’s a Mountain Got to Do with the Nativity? And Other Questions About “Go Tell It on the Mountain”

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

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.

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Does the “All Night Vigil” Last All Night?

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PictureYes. A full performance of the entire special service in the Russian Orthodox Church can indeed last pretty much all night, but be aware that the time is filled with much more than music–litanies (petitions and responses), Scripture readings, prayers, etc. A composer wouldn’t have to come up with hours and hours of music. Also, the service is often/usually cut, with the full version being performed very rarely.
I ran across a fascinating article describing a 1911 performance that reproduced the long form. It lasted from 6:00 PM to 1:50 AM the following morning, so almost eight hours. If certain parts of the service had been performed in an even earlier form, it would have lasted three or four more hours. Here’s a little snippet from the article:

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How Does “Ave Maria” Fit into the Christmas Story?

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Leonardo da Vinci, “The Annunciation,” via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

It fits in as the precipitating incident of the story as a whole, since Christmas revolves around the birth of Christ. “Hail, Mary!” is the greeting that the angel Gabriel gives to Mary when he appears to her and tells her that she will be the mother of the Messiah. This event is typically called the “annnunciation,” or announcement. Note that this event happens nine months before the birth of Christ, not at Christmas itself. A version of the angel’s words has been incorporated into the worship services of both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Let me begin with a literal word-for-word translation from both languages involved, Latin and Russian.

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