December Daily: Advent music

[resonant]

torch asks, "favorite advent songs!"

My current favorite Advent hymn is "Comfort, Comfort Ye My People." I have two recordings of it, and I'm not 100% satisfied with either of them.

Comfort, Comfort Ye My People by Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church Choir is an anthem like you'd hear from a very good church choir. It changes the rhythm in places, which bugs me.

Comfort, Comfort Ye My People by the Choirs of the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta is more of a production, with winds and percussion.

I would love just a straightforward, minimally fancied-up version of the hymn, if anyone would like to share.

Savior of the Nations, Come by the Valparaiso University Chorale

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus by the Scottish Festival Singers

People, Look East by the Mount Holyoke College Glee Club --- when was the last time you heard a female glee club? I really like this.

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn by the Benedictines of Mary is a pregnant-Mary song with the lovely pagan touch of a long-dormant tree bursting into flower.

Prepare the Way, O Zion/Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus by the Miserable Offenders (!) is an interesting combination of two hymns with entirely different tempos.

Come, Love, Caroling by Shusha is another pregnant-Mary hymn that I particularly like, though I'm not 100% happy with this performance. But I love the text. "All the while, wherever I may be, I carry the maker of the world in me."

Seeking Christmas music: In addition to the version of "Comfort, Comfort Ye My People" mentioned above, I'm also looking for a version of "What Child Is This" that has Dix's different text with each chorus ("Nails, spears shall pierce him through," etc.), instead of always defaulting to "This, this is Christ the king."





1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 -- jjhunter, "What do you carry with you?"
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 -- allheadybooks, "13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!"
14 -- schneefink, "how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 -- ride_4ever, "rec two due South fanworks: a favorite that you created and a favorite that someone else created. (Anything! Triggers and squicks not a concern for me.)"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 -- jjhunter, "What are five words you like or find especially meaningful + 1 word you despise? Why?"
20 --
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 --
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[nestra]

I almost certainly have a "What Child Is This?" with that text, but I'm away from home at the moment. Remind me later if I don't remember to come back to this.

[resonant]

That would be terrific.

[nestra]

I don't understand how this is possible, but even though I have an album called "Best Loved Christmas Carols" by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge", it doesn't have "What Child Is This?" on it. In fact, I only have four versions of it, one of which is instrumental and two of which are folky acoustic. That's about half of what I'd expected to find in my library.

Sorry!

[resonant]

Funny how that happens!

I imagine there are probably several versions on Freegal; I'll just have to resign myself to listening to all the samples and weeding through 500 children's choirs / overproduced dreck / suspiciously over-emotional Christian rock versions / etc.

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[raine]

Have you heard this version: https://youtu.be/rTOeAl-Ph8I

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[resonant]

Musically it's exactly what I'm after, but now the lyrics bug me! I'm very puzzled by changing Catherine Winkworth's translation to avoid referring to Jerusalem as "she," but not changing it to avoid referring to God as "he."

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[raine]

Stylistic choice? I’m not as familiar with this hymn as you are, so I just looked for a version that was sounded like it was sung by a congregation rather than a performance choir.

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[resonant]

See, I'm just like this in real life, which is why I'm hard to buy gifts for. It took me three years to buy a bathrobe because I had such exacting preferences.

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[raine]

Heh, it's totally OK. I get that way about certain ingredients when I cook, which is a trait I inherited/learned from my mom. ("No, not that soy sauce! Who buys store brand soy sauce!")

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[resonant]

I literally, visibly flinched at the idea of store brand soy sauce.

Re: Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

[raine]

Welcome to my horror at discovering it's a thing you can buy in grocery stores here in the Pacific Northwest.

[mekare]

Huh. For most of these it tells me permission denied?

We did Come Thou unexpected Jesus for last year’s advent concert (with me supporting on the piano) and I’m looking forward to hear this version, as well as all the other recs!

I had never heard What Child is this and just checked it out on YT, then being very surprised to hear the melody of Greensleeves. :-)

[resonant]

Can you try the download again? There was one point where I accidentally trashed everything, and if you happened to try it right then ...

If it still doesn’t work, I’ll upload again.

[torch]

Yay, music! I was all advented out on the 2nd after two advent masses in a row, so it's just as well I didn't manage to fit my suggested subject in then.*g* I feel much more seasonally receptive now! *off to listen*

[resonant]

I miss Advent. Presbyterian churches hardly do more than gesture at it; I guess it has the taint of popery about it.

The church I grew up in (Episcopal) had a priest who was a bit of an Advent crank -- to the point where the church Christmas party was held in the first week of January, because "no, we can't have it December 15th, because it's not Christmas yet!"

[mekare]

Huh I can access all of them except for:

Maria walks amid the thorns
Come thou unexpected Jesus

Funny, the two ones I know I can’t hear. :-) no clue what the problem is.

[resonant]

Try these, then:

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus

Maria Walks Amid the Thorns