Season's greetings to all
 

Season's greetings to all on Christmas Eve.

Here is some music that I've prepared for a show we didn't manage to stage this year, but hope to next year.

It's called "The Christmas Mysteries" and it's based on the English, 14th century Wakefield Cycle of mystery plays. A Cycle play was a set of religious dramas that were played outside, on pageant wagons, in many towns throughout Europe in medieval times. They told the story of the Bible through many small play-lets. They were often comic, spectacular, and very entertaining.

I've adapted the four Christmas plays from the Wakefield cycle into one 1-hour play that we intend to produce outdoors (at Christmas-time, in Canada!). Basically it's a highly glorified Sunday school pageant, with the Nativity, the Shepherds, the Kings, Herod, the Flight Into Egypt and more. Oh yes, and a donkey.

We will be lucky enough to have the Anglican church choir participating in the show, so the music will be glorious.

Here are some of the "numbers" we will use.

Have a safe and merry Christmas.

David

The choir sing this excerpt fr
 

The choir sing this excerpt from Josquin Desprez' Ave Maria:

Ave vera virginitas,
immaculata castitas,
cuius purificatio
nostra fuit purgatio.

Oh, Mater Dei,
Oh, Mater Dei,
Oh, Mater Dei, memento mei.

which translates as:

Hail, true virginity,
Immaculate chastity,
Whose purification
Was our cleansing.

It doesn't scan in English, but in Latin, it rolls beautifully.

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The Shepherds are a strange di
 

The Shepherds are a strange dichotomy: they are clearly from Yorkshire, they speak with Yorkshire accents and talk of places around Wakefield, England, but are also the Shepherds from the Christmas story. What this does is humanize the characters and would have made the Christmas story intensely immediate to the shepherds and farmers from Yorkshire who were watching the play in the 14th century.

The Shepherds provide a lot of comedy as well as some truly moving moments. For instance, as the Kings lay their gold, frankincense and myrrh before the Infant, the Shepherds lay their own gifts: some cherries, a ball and a small bird one has caught. These are not magnificent gifts, but they are from the heart.

Early in the play, as the Shepherds watch their flocks, they decide to sing a song. The song I've had them choose is a hymn that was composed by John Dunstable to celebrate Henry V's victory over the French at Agincourt (1415). As the Wakefield mysteries were known to have been performed as late as Shakespeare's day, I feel justified in having them sing it.

Again, we have the dichotomy of the new and old with the Shepherds singing a song composed fourteen hundred years after Jesus' time, the time which they are supposed to be enacting. Throughout the plays, there is a unique innocence regarding place and time, with characters using Christian terms even as they go to worship at Jesus' birth. It's a lovely quality to the scripts.

Thank God, Englishmen,
Thank Him for victory.


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Howdy David, Keep bringing
 

Howdy David,

Keep bringing 'em on! I'm loving it!

ttfn,
Sherry

The Kings, the Shepherds and t
 

The Kings, the Shepherds and the Angels sing as they leave the Stable, having seen the Baby Jesus. All sing the refrain, with Soprano, Tenor, Alto and Bass, respectively, taking each verse. I had difficulty with the alternating 2/2, 6/4 bars until I changed bar 7 to 5/4 and the rhythms suddenly made sense.

Gaudete, gaudete
Christus est Natus ex
Maria virgine.
Gaudete, gaudete
Christus est Natus ex
Maria virgine.
Gaudete.

Tempus adest gratiæ
Hoc quod optabamus,
Carmina lætitiæ
Devote reddamus.

Deus homo factus est
Natura mirante,
Mundus renovatus est
A Christo regnante.

Ezechielis porta
Clausa pertransitur,
Unde lux est orta
Salus invenitur.

Ergo nostra cantio,
Psallat iam in lustro;
Benedicat Domino:
Salus Regi nostro.

Translated:

Rejoice, rejoice,
Christ is born of
The Virgin Mary.
Rejoice, rejoice,
Christ is born of
The Virgin Mary.
Rejoice.

The time of grace has come
That we have desired;
Let us devoutly return
Joyful verses.

God has become man,
And nature marvels;
The world has been renewed
By Christ who is King.

The closed gate of Ezechiel
Has been passed through;
Whence the light is born,
Salvation is found.

Therefore let our song
Now be sung in brightness
Let it give praise to the Lord:
Greeting to our King.

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The song was a No. 11 hit for the English electric-folk group Steeleye Dan in 1974.

And finally, at the end, the K
 

And finally, at the end, the Kings, Shepherds and all go their separate ways, singing Dona Nobis Pacem (Give us peace.)

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Amen.

Hello David, The concept of
 

Hello David,

The concept of this play is quite compelling. Time-wise, it takes us more than a quarter of the way back to the original Christmas day, enacted by the medieval players.

These songs are all beautiful. I hope that next year you'll be able to record the choir singing them, so we can hear the voices.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

...we intend to produce outdoors (at Christmas-time, in Canada!)<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
I imagine that these songs will be sung with much vibrato if they are sung out doors at Christmas time in Canada.

Cheers
-- Mark