I'm going to post a #Carol a day for (what remains of) #Advent. It only seems appropriate this year to start with something from #Ukraine. This is a song we all know, but usually via the version that was adapted into English 101 years ago. Originally, it's a #Ukranian New Year's carol - 'Schedryk'. And here it is, as accompanied by bandur, the Ukrainian stringed instrument. Happy Advent and Slava Ukraini! 🎄 🇺🇦
(NB. This is a 🧵 but I'll leave the other posts unlisted.)
2. I'm OBSESSED by PhilipStopford's setting of 'Lully, Lulla, Lullay'.
This recording by Voces8 is insanely beautiful. Warning: it's sort of mesmeric, then as the soprano takes off in the final verse you become dead of joy. Mind how you go.
3. (I am SO behind. Sorry. l'll catch up and least post a carol for each day, even if it isn't on the day...)
So...
Here's a lovely slug of Austrian schmalz, as sung here by the Cologne Cathedral Girls' Choir in a really rather gorgeous arrangement. Death is still mentioned but on the whole it's less murdery than the previous entry.
4. Oooh, I LOVE this one. Cecilia MacDowell's spikily catch setting of 'Now May We Singen'. I love how the voices not singing the verse make a sort of mediaeval pipe-like drone underneath, while everything bounces and pops above them. Must be huge fun to sing.
5. Rutter! You can't have Christmas without Rutter. That's in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. This is *sort of* Rutter, in that it's his arrangement, not his tune. The tune is the classic French carol 'Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant'. The arrangement is lush like brandy butter.
@mrchrisaddison he's a lovely man, but I thought it was the other way round: you must have Christmas without Rutter...
That said, the 'Shepherd's Pipe Carol' is pretty good...
Chris Addison
Freddy