This is a C15 Marian carol from Germany, using a traditional folk tune that as paraphrased and translated by Anthony G. Petti found its way into the New Living Parish Hymn Book. The tune is ES IST EIN ROS’. I blogged it as “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”, but it is also CWBII 258, “Behold, a Rose E’er Blooming.”
Breviary Hymns gives some background of its place in the divine office and as a Christmas song. Wikipedia has an extensive post as well as does LiturgyShare. Canto Domino have the sheet music in the same arrangement as in this hymn book, as does CWB II.
As someone who has rarely attended a church with an organist or used this sort of repetoire I am still learning as I go and am grateful for comments and illumination. I’m struggling with the relevance of five hundred year old German folk tunes and what makes them sacred to a current Australian parish. I can only think it would be continuous use in worship, and if a parish hasn’t been singing this sort of music for forty years whether is it is still appropriate.
BIAB has few church organ styles, but I have found by using VST organ sounds, grabbing chords, usually from TIS, stipulating the bass notes from the sheet music and adding the alto line to the melody it gives a more convincing organ sound. It’s still fake though.
Looking at text there is the usual issue that Christmas is in the midst of summer in these parts.
1 A noble flower of Juda from tender roots has sprung,
A rose from stem of Jesse, as prophets long had sung,
A blossom fair and bright, that in the midst of winter
will change to dawn our night.2 The rose of grace and beauty of which Isaiah sings
Is Mary, Virgin Mother, and Christ the flower she brings.
By God’s divine decree she bore our loving Saviour,
Who died to set us free.3 To Mary, dearest Mother with fervent hearts we pray:
Grant that your tender infant will cast our sins away,
and guide us with his love that we shall ever serve him,
and live with him above.
Can’t beat real organ:
Choir:
LiturgyShare:
Some liberties have been taken, but it is very pleasant:
I agree with your comment about summer relevance, but why should its age and German source matter to Australians? It’s a beautiful, gentle tune that certainly doesn’t need the organ to be effective and fits the text like a glove! There are plenty of old European tunes that are beloved. One could start with OLD 100TH, used with “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” and countless other texts! There are good reasons some hymn tunes from long ago survive while the overwhelming majority are quickly forgotten!
Chris
I suppose I’m thinking of all those church documents that prohibit profane secular music from use in church, when these lovely old traditional songs that are meant to be sacred were originally profane secular music, in this case, five hundred years ago in Germany.
Geoff
From the Preface of Oxford Book of Carols:
Carols are songs with a religious impulse that are simple, hilarious, popular, and modern. They are generally spontaneous and direct in expression, and their simplicity of form causes them sometimes to ramble on like a ballad. Carol literature and music are rich in true folk poetry and remain fresh and buoyant even when the subject is a grave one. But they vary a good deal, some a narrative, some dramatic, some personal, a few are secular, and there are some which do not possess all the typical characteristics.
…
The word carol has a dancing origin and once meant to dance in a ring. It may go back through the Old French ‘caroler’ and the Latin ‘choraula’ to the Greek ‘choraules’, a flute player for chorus dancing, and ultimately to the ‘choros’, which was originally a circling dance and the origin of the attic drama.
The carol, in fact, by forsaking the timeless contemplative melodies of the church, began the era of modern music, which has throughout been based upon the dance. But nonetheless, joyfulness in the words have been sometimes discarded by those who are professionally afraid of gaiety. Some French carols were rewritten by well meaning clergymen into frigid exposition of edifying theology. Some of the English tunes were used by excellent Methodists of the 18th century to preach their favourite doctrines. Before their time, the British tendency to lugubriousness had occasionally shown itself in the folk carol: but even in such cases, the dancing tunes remained happily to belie the words, and in France, behind the ecclesiastical propriety of modern noels, there lurk many carols… to bear witness to the spirit of a more spontaneous and undoubting faith.
We should also keep our carols in their proper place too.
It annoys me how O Filii et Filiae and Orientis Partibus have the tum te tum tunes in CWB2. I learnt the chant tunes first and they’re much nicer.
I find it really funny how CWB2 puts two different versions of the O Filii tune right next to each other, same name, different meter, different rhythm. (348 and 349)