Well I’m glad you asked! Because “Maris” doesn’t mean “Mary.” It means “sea” or “ocean.” So the title literally means, if you keep the same word order: “Hail, Sea Star.” So where did that wording come from?
The original lyrics date back to somewhere around the 9th century and have been attributed to several authors; no final conclusion has been reached on that issue. The words present Mary as a merciful and loving mother, with “Star of the Sea” being a title that especially appealed to travelers praying for a safe journey. The words were sung to Gregorian chant music, which is always anonymous.
Note: this post was originally written about a concert in Oct. 2017 that my own choir performed.
Well my goodness! So far I’ve written about the music in our concert from Anne Kilstofte, Dan Forrest, and Daniel Elder. All three are young and American, actively engaged in composing, arranging, teaching, conducting . . . you name it. To that list I now add Victor C. Johnson, the composer of our lovely opening piece, “Music in the Night.” I had looked up the author of the lyrics, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and found her life story to be quite interesting. She’s a good example of what was called a “lady writer” back in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, turning out short stories, poems and novels to make money when her father’s business failed.
Image from the Library of Congress, Storer, Florence Edith, artist created circa 1912
The original title of this poem is “Christmas Eve,” and it was published in a book of poems and short stories by Eugene Field called Christmas Tales and Christmas Verse. So those facts would seem to end the matter. It’s a lullaby being sung by a mother to her child at Christmas, with stars and angels in the mix. It must be Mary singing to the baby Jesus, right? Well, I don’t think so.
Why not? First of all, look at the illustration that goes with the poem. It’s of an early 1900’s mother and child—and note the “child” part, as it’s not a baby. Secondly, consider the title: “Christmas Eve,” not “Christmas Night.” Nit-picky to the max, I know, but still! It’s taking place the night before Christmas. I will also take a little credit myself here and say that I found the words of the song to be puzzling the first time I heard it, even before I knew the original title, because there seemed to be a muddle about who’s being addressed. The child who is being sung to sleep is told to “hear the Master calling” and reminded that “the Shepherd calls his little lambs.” It seems clear that the Master and Shepherd titles refer to someone other than the child, right? That’s the way I read it, anyway.
Oh folks, you’d just never believe how much I want to say about “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”! I will try to rein myself in, but it’s hard.
Let’s start with this whole idea of talking to or about stars in poetry or song lyrics. I’ll mention two famous ones here: First, John Keats’ poem “Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art” and, second, the song “Catch A Falling Star and Put It In Your Pocket.” (I was reminded of the gift that the Lady Galadriel gives to Frodo, the light of a literal star to put in his pocket: “In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain.” Later, the light from that star glass helps Sam and Frodo in their flight from and fight with the horrible Shelob: “Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame.”)
There’s also a tradition of wishing upon a star, particularly the first star to come out in the evening. So, we have “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio and “Good Night, My Someone” from The Music Man, in which Amaryllis says that you have to say “good night” to your sweetheart on the evening star, but you have to say it as soon as you see it or it doesn’t count. I have no idea where this idea came from, and, once again, I need to restrain myself from a massive Google dive with the terms “star wish upon” or some such. Perhaps there are some mysteries that don’t need to be solved. (I think we all know that the “evening star” isn’t a star at all, but a planet: usually Venus but sometimes Mercury.)
Where does “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” fit into this galaxy of ideas? First, the star is addressed: “Go ahead and twinkle, star!” Sort of in the same league as “Shine on, harvest moon.” Nothing like telling a heavenly body what to do, I always say. (At least, this reading of “twinkle, twinkle” as being an imperative command is the way I’m interpreting this line. None of the commentaries I consulted addressed this issue. I guess the line could also read, “You’re a real twinkler,”) In this poem the star twinkles in order to give light, particularly to travelers. The poet doesn’t deal with why stars twinkle in the first place, probably didn’t know the reason, and probably wouldn’t have cared if she had known. But the star is mysterious: “How much I wonder what you actually are! You’re so far above the world, shining like a diamond.”
I was surprised to find out that these words are not some anonymous folk material but written by someone named Jane Taylor, who wrote a book of poetry called Rhymes for the Nursery, published in 1806. In 1838 the poem was first published with the tune in The Singing Master: First-Class Tune Book.
But what about that tune? It’s French and apparently anonymous, originally used for a poem titled “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman,” or “La Confidence,” in which a young woman confides in her maman aboutan incident in the woods when she meets up with a young man whom she’s been sighing over. He takes advantage of her weakness, saying, “If you wait too long, you will regret it.” And so, she “fell into his arms.” Nothing at all graphic here, but the story wasn’t considered fitting for children to sing, so a new version was written for the tune in which a child tells her mother that candy is better than logical reasoning. At that point the tune became associated with nursery rhymes and not with love poetry, so it was used for several others besides “Twinkle, Twinkle,” including the “Alphabet song” and “Baa-Baa Black Sheep.” For those of us who have struggled at one time or another with playing the piano, our clearest memories of this tune may come from the set of twelve fiendishly-difficult variations that Mozart wrote. I don’t think I ever got past the first five or six, as they get progressively more fiendish. Alas!
I can’t, of course, neglect to quote from the Lewis Carroll version of the poem. (You’re always safe quoting Lewis Carroll!) The Mad Hatter sings:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you’re at! Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky.
(Why is the Hatter mad? Ah, that’s a whole other story, one which you will have to look up for yourself.)
And since we’re in Wonderland, perhaps you’ll indulge my including the parody of another song about stars, “Soup of the Evening,” sung by the Mock Turtle. The original is “Star of the Evening,” by someone named James M. Sayles, and I have a feeling that Carroll didn’t like him and/or his verse. Here’s the first stanza from Sayles:
Beautiful star in heav’n so bright , Softly falls thy silv’ry light, As thou movest from earth afar, Star of the evening, beautiful star, Star of the evening, beautiful star.
But the Mock Turtle sings:
Beautiful soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen. Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup, Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!
I have to include the last verse because of the funny rhyme:
Beautiful soup, Who cares for fish, Game or any other dish? Who would not give all else for twoP ennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?
I originally sang an arrangement of this song in a concert back in the fall of 2017 with my beloved choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, in a most unusually-themed program, “Starry, Starry Night.” No, it had nothing to do with Christmas–we did another concert in December. The arranger of our piece was Daniel Elder, a very young man, born in 1986, who has been writing compositions and winning awards since 2009. His version is gorgeous–and difficult. It’s a cappella, and we struggled mightily to stay on pitch. In the end it was very rewarding, though. And since I revised this article in October 2020 and so many in-person concerts had been cancelled (including ours), I’m using as the performance video a virtual choir version from a high school choir that does, as far as I can tell, stay on pitch:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the trav’ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro’ my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
‘Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav’ller in the dark,
Tho’ I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
I have been absolutely salivating at the idea of sinking my teeth into this Frost poem. We tend to associate Frost with his familiar and simple poems: “Stopping by Woods,” “The Road Not Taken,” and perhaps “Mending Wall.” Even those poems can be mined for deeper meaning, but when you get to some of his other ones, well! You (or perhaps I) can go on just about forever.
I’ve had the great privilege of singing this work with my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale. We loved it! (So did the audience.) All three parts of the Nocturnes have lyrics from American poems, and I’m going to take a stab at clarifying them. As I’ve said this before, though, taking a poem apart to pry out the meaning is a little bit like explaining a joke: when you’re all done, you’ve destroyed the original. Still, there are some intriguing lines in all three selections that repay analysis. If you’d rather leave the mystery intact, you can skip the following.
Image accessed via Wikipedia; original painting is in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City
First of all, I have to confess my (former) utter ignorance about who Don McLean is. I was of course familiar with the song “American Pie,” but for some reason had never actually noticed who its original performer was. (And I’m much more taken with the parody version of it from Weird Al Yankovic.) So when I got the music for a 2017 concert with my own choir and I saw McLean’s name as the author of “Vincent,” I just assumed he was some sort of obscure artsy-jazzy guy who was interested in art and liked Vincent van Gogh. Well, au contraire! One YouTube version of McLean’s performance has had almost ten million views. (“American Pie” has had over 71 million views from one video; I didn’t go through and add up the numbers from them all but would guess it’s close to 100 million.) McLean is still alive and still performing, although none of his songs has ever approached the popularity of these two, both of which were on his second album, also titled American Pie, released in 1971.
If you had been around in 1902 and invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII (“Bertie” to his friends), you would have heard the premier performance of Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, always known by its opening words: “I Was Glad.”
Psalm 122 in the Jewish Bible is one of a group of Psalms (songs) usually called “Psalms of ascent.” Scholars disagree on what exactly the word “ascent” refers, but the idea that’s usually listed first is that these psalms were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to participate in various festivals in the Jewish calendar. Jerusalem is built on several hills (one of which had the name “Zion,” sometimes used to refer to Jerusalem as a whole), so you would indeed be ascending as you made your approach into the city.
When I sang this piece with my own choir, I was intrigued by the title of this piece, as I associated Racine with Greek mythology. As a French minor in college I had read Racine’s play Phèdre, which has a story line about the hero Theseus, his second wife Phaedra, and his son from his first marriage, Hyppolite. I won’t go into the story here, but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with Christian theology!
Well, duh. From the Bible, of course. We all know that. But when a pieces becomes so familiar, so ingrained in our consciousness, we forget sometimes that they’re actually about something–that the composers started with an idea, a nugget of truth, a theme.
Let’s first look a selection from Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation: “The Heavens Are Telling,” is not from the first chapter of Genesis as you might have expected. Instead, it’s from Psalm 19, the first verse of which is: The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. (King James Version, thus the strange spelling of “sheweth” and “handywork.”)
Note: this post was originally written about a concert in Oct. 2017 that my own choir performed.
Oh folks, you’d just never believe how much I want to say about “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”! I will try to rein myself in, but it’s hard.
Um, I guess so. I’m going to try, anyway.
If you had been around in 1902 and invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII (“Bertie” to his friends), you would have heard the premier performance of Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, always known by its opening words: “I Was Glad.”
When I sang this piece with my own choir, I was intrigued by the title of this piece, as I associated Racine with Greek mythology. As a French minor in college I had read Racine’s play Phèdre, which has a story line about the hero Theseus, his second wife Phaedra, and his son from his first marriage, Hyppolite. I won’t go into the story here, but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with Christian theology! 