The Saturday Soundtrack that falls just before Christmas is when I traditionally send a gift to readers of some of my favorite Yuletide tunes of the season.

The Duke Chapel Choir and soloists, accompanied by Mallarmé Music with Dr. Zebulon M. Highben conducting, performed G.F. Handel’s Messiah before sold-out audiences at Duke University Chapel on December 6, 7, and 8, 2024. Our son Andrew Bearden Brown was the tenor soloist, and we’ll begin this Yuletide special with Andrew singing the Recitative Comfort Ye, My People followed by the Aria Every Valley. Here’s the link to the full performance (where there are some nice comments about the tenor soloist).

Guitarist Robin Bullock plays his beautiful rendition of Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich‘s Christmas song that didn’t begin as a Christmas song—Carol of the Bells—at each year’s annual IMT Celtic Christmas celebration. I am reminded when I hear it of the tune’s meaning for the people of Ukraine as well as how Americans (and many others) owe Ukrainians a huge debt of gratitude for their resistance to Russian aggression.

We have been hearing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel throughout Advent. Here VOCES8 is joined by members of Apollo5 and The VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra to perform Taylor Scott Davis’s beautiful arrangement of the tune.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is another pre-Christmas Day piece, as Christ speaks from Mary’s womb in this well-loved and familiar tune. It is performed here by Ensemble Altera (including our son, Andrew) from a 2020 pandemic-era recording (thus the spacing of the singers).

“Whether its provenance is English or American is still the subject of debate, but the transcendentalist beauty of its narrator communing with the divine through nature is not. Elizabeth Poston sets the deeply personal text without affectation in a quiet, almost shape-note hymn style.“

Robin Bullock’s album Christmas Eve is Here, is full of beautiful guitar, cittern, and mandolin arrangements of the old chestnuts. Here from that album is In the Bleak Midwinter—based on a poem by Christina Rossetti—which is one of Candice’s most beloved songs of the season.

VOCES8 has, as one might expect, a hauntingly beautiful take on the Ola Gjeilo’s arrangement of Gustav Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter.

I cherish the combination of words and music speaking to hope and life springing from the darkness in this tune. Kate Rusby included a setting in one of her holiday albums with Bleak Mid-Winter (Yorkshire).

Candice’s other Christmas favorite is “Canada’s oldest Christmas Carol.” The Huron Carol was written by a Jesuit missionary, Jean de Brebeuf, in 1643. This setting is performed by the Exultate Chamber Singers of Toronto.

Andrew is a regular member of Ensemble Altera, which brings beautiful and thoughtful music to every performance. In December of 2023 they presented a concert of seasonal music in Boston and Providence, which included this Michael Garrepy arrangement of O Holy Night.

Bring a Torch began as a French dance tune for nobility in the 17th century, but quickly became a Christmas standard, as played here by the wonderful musician and composer Alex de Grassi. 

The characters “Jeannette” and “Isabelle/Isabella” are two female farmhands who have found the Baby Jesus and his mother Mary in a stable. Excited by this discovery, they run to a nearby village to tell the inhabitants, who rush to see the new arrivals. Visitors to the stable are urged to keep their voices quiet, so the newborn can enjoy his dreams.

The Southern Harmony shape-note tune Star in the East is one of those Yuletide songs not heard as frequently as it deserves, yet it has always been a personal favorite, with the lyrics pointing to what’s really important.

Vainly we offer each ample oblation, / Vainly with gifts we his favor secure; / Richer by far is the heart’s adoration, / Nearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

Here is a traditional version, sung by one of the country’s premier early music groups, The Rose Ensemble.

Al Petteway and Amy White pair Star in the East as part of an instrumental medley with Born in Bethney.

Next is a 2021 recording by the sopranos, altos, and countertenors of Ensemble Altera as they sing the traditional English carol Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in an arrangement by John Rutter. While it first appeared in written form in 1833, the carol is undoubtedly older. “The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice. An innovative feature of the telling is that Jesus’ life is repeatedly characterized as a dance.” That is followed by Robin Bullock‘s instrumental setting of the same tune that can best be described as “frisky.”

The Wexford Carol is one of Ireland’s oldest Christmas carols, played here by Alison Krauss, Yo-Yo Ma, and Natalie MacMaster in a 2009 video 

My friend Custer LaRue is one of the best ballad singers in the land. Her 2009 album with the Baltimore Consort, Bright Day Star, was rightly described by one music critic as “One of the finest Christmas recordings ever made.” I’ll feature the traditional Cherry Tree Carol followed by the delightful Hey for Christmas! written by John Playford.

I have featured this VOCES8 rendition of the Philip Stopford setting of the Coventry Carol, the traditional English tune dating from the 16th century, before here on MTC. Stopford’s Lully, Lulla, Lullay—filmed by VOCES8 in St. Stephen’s Walbrook Church, London—is so haunting, and soprano Eleonore Cockerham’s soft, clear, yet ethereal voice is a treasure.

Windborne reminds us that this time of year is one of community, as heard in the traditional Here We Come a-Wassailing.

As Christmas passes Kate Rusby‘s rendition of Let the Bells Ring calls on us to cast off the cruel past and look to a new year, while Windborne calls on us to Welcome in Another Year as we “let the old one burn.”

However you celebrate the season, Happy Yuletide to one and all!

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Jorien Loman on Unsplash