Talk about a wealth of material! I’m going to talk about John Rutter himself and his writing of our piece and then branch out into the meaning of the text in a couple of followup ones. I’d encourage you to follow the link at the end to some earlier material (including some words from the great man himself via Facebook) that I wrote when we sang the Gloria.
First, a little background about the British music scene at the time of the Gloria. While Rutter had published the Christmas carol “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol” (which the Chorale has sung, although it’s better known to us it as “On the Way to Bethlehem”) at the age of 18, he wasn’t very well known in the UK music world even as he produced a number of other Christmas carols. “Difficult though it is to believe today, back in the 1960s and 70s the UK’s musical establishment was so polarized by the latest contemporary fads and fancies that Rutter’s exceptional talent went largely unremarked.”
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:
I’ve done my usual going-far-afield process in trying to decipher this carol, and found that, as usual, Liberties Have Been Taken with the original text, this one from Catalonia. (That’s a region of Spain that speaks a dialect called Catalan; you may be aware that there’s a separatist movement there that seeks to have independence from Spain. The tune, by the way, is apparently Catalonian also, as I’ve seen no composer’s name anywhere.) To start off this post, then, here’s the original text and a quite literal translation:
These two items show up all over the place in Christmas music. This verse from the modern carol “In the Silence” by Craig Courtney with words incorporating an Appalachian folk song is particularly pointed, as it includes the symbolism quite plainly:
Yes, it has. But that’s what always happens. If successive generations couldn’t put their own stamp on sources, we’d be pretty limited in what we could read, see and hear. There’s a theory that there are only around seven plots that show up in every piece of fiction ever written. I’m not sure that I quite buy that, but it’s certainly true that the same themes show up over and over again. We never tire of true love’s triumph, for instance. And I am especially fond of fairy tales, having devoured so many of them when I was in grade school. How exciting it always was to go to the bookmobile with my mom and see what new choices were there. If a book had the word “fairy” in the title, I was game.
I assumed that the answer to the above question was “yes.” (And I have to admit here that I’ve never seen this movie or its live musical version. Our family has never been great fans of the Disney animated features, with the exception of Beauty and the Beast. But maybe now I’ll watch it, because I’ve gotten very intrigued by its creation.) So anyway, The Lion King has the distinction of being a Disney animated film based on an original story rather than a known source. .png)
As I often say when writing these posts: Hoo boy. There ended up being lots to say about this supposedly simple song. My purpose in writing this post, as with all that I do, is to deepen your understanding of what you’re singing (or hearing, if you’re reading this post as an audience member). Along with the lighthearted words and fun arrangement of this piece there’s a darker background arising from its source material, both immediate and historical.
There are so many ideas packed into the texts of Lux Aeterna that it’s hard to know what to include. But since the main juxtaposition is that of light vs. darkness, I thought it would be interesting for my second essay on this masterpiece to look at other pairs of opposites before I regretfully move on to other pieces in our concert. (Next week: the deep inner meanings of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”)