When you see the title of the English Christmas carol “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” you have to ask yourself the question in the title of this post.
And the answer is: Probably not. Snow in Israel is very rare. I’m posting a picture below of a historic snowfall in Jerusalem in 2013. Normally, though, there are two seasons in this part of the world: the wet and the dry. If Jesus were indeed born in December, the weather could have been cold and wet but probably not snowy.
I’ve written about bluebirds before, when I asked why Uncle Remus had a bluebird on his shoulder in the song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and I revisited that image when I talked about “Over the Rainbow.” Now I want to re-revisit the topic in a short post about the short piece “The Blue Bird” by Charles V. Stanford with lyrics by Mary Coleridge. I probably can’t add anything to the musical analysis given below by a professional, so I’ll confine myself to some info on the author of the text and also about the composer.
The short answer that this folk song describes an actual event that took place on February 8 and 9, 1889. That being said, there’s an almost endless array of discussion/argument about its wording. To give you just a taste of this backing and forthing, there are whole threads on discussion forums talking about why the song says “from Yarmouth down to Scarborough” when Scarborough is clearly north of Yarmouth. (Don’t believe me? Here’s the link to Google maps.) Since I’m no sailor, I can’t pretend to understand the reasoning as to why this wording is perfectly accurate in nautical terms, but it has something to do with the direction of the winds and currents. I think. And that’s just one small point in the whole mix. If you’re of a mind to do some reading yourself, google “Grimsby Town fishing disaster” and you’ll have more than enough to keep you busy. (Don’t just google “Grimsby Town” on its own, as all you’ll get is stuff about their football club—soccer to us ignorant Americans. Very interesting in its way, of course, but not much to our point here.)
I know. This song is, like, seriously crazy. Right? Well, yes and no.
First of all, the crazy part. Or at least the let’s-not-take-this-too-seriously part. This is a get-up-and-dance, stomp-those-feet kinda tune. (Okay, I’ll try not to use any more hyphens.) The words don’t really matter all that much in the final analysis. I’ve been in a Celtic concert before in which we sang a song about a lonely fish! By comparison this one is a model of reason and logic. Still, by the time it has repeated “Si do Mhaimeoi I” about five hundred times any sense of the words is lost, whether you know the translation or not.
Where did the tune originate?
The tune used for “Danny Boy” is a true folk melody, originally called “Derry Air,” because it was first written down in County Derry, Ireland, in the town of Limavady. Once Ireland became an official part of Britain, the county was renamed “Londonderry,” with the choice of name somewhat determined by one’s political views. But whatever the name of the county, the origin story seems fairly straightforward: Jame Ross, a collector of Irish traditional folk music, heard a harpist (or a fiddler, depending on the version, and usually identified as blind) performing in the street outside her house and rushed out to copy down the tune he was playing. Unfortunately, she neglected to get the performer’s name, but she sent in her notated manuscript, along with a number of others she had collected. to the musicologist George Petrie, whose 1855 book The Ancient Music of Ireland listed the tune as an anonymous air but with a note attributing its collection to Ross. The tune was published as an instrumental piece with no lyrics but quickly became extremely popular with songwriters. The most well-known of these settings is the song “Danny Boy,” written in 1910 by an English lawyer named Frederic Weatherly. The meaning of the lyrics has been consistently misunderstood, however, leading to the next question:
Oh folks, you’d just never believe how much I want to say about “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”! I will try to rein myself in, but it’s hard.
Let’s start with this whole idea of talking to or about stars in poetry or song lyrics. I’ll mention two famous ones here: First, John Keats’ poem “Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art” and, second, the song “Catch A Falling Star and Put It In Your Pocket.” (I was reminded of the gift that the Lady Galadriel gives to Frodo, the light of a literal star to put in his pocket: “In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain.” Later, the light from that star glass helps Sam and Frodo in their flight from and fight with the horrible Shelob: “Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame.”)
There’s also a tradition of wishing upon a star, particularly the first star to come out in the evening. So, we have “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio and “Good Night, My Someone” from The Music Man, in which Amaryllis says that you have to say “good night” to your sweetheart on the evening star, but you have to say it as soon as you see it or it doesn’t count. I have no idea where this idea came from, and, once again, I need to restrain myself from a massive Google dive with the terms “star wish upon” or some such. Perhaps there are some mysteries that don’t need to be solved. (I think we all know that the “evening star” isn’t a star at all, but a planet: usually Venus but sometimes Mercury.)
Where does “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” fit into this galaxy of ideas? First, the star is addressed: “Go ahead and twinkle, star!” Sort of in the same league as “Shine on, harvest moon.” Nothing like telling a heavenly body what to do, I always say. (At least, this reading of “twinkle, twinkle” as being an imperative command is the way I’m interpreting this line. None of the commentaries I consulted addressed this issue. I guess the line could also read, “You’re a real twinkler,”) In this poem the star twinkles in order to give light, particularly to travelers. The poet doesn’t deal with why stars twinkle in the first place, probably didn’t know the reason, and probably wouldn’t have cared if she had known. But the star is mysterious: “How much I wonder what you actually are! You’re so far above the world, shining like a diamond.”
I was surprised to find out that these words are not some anonymous folk material but written by someone named Jane Taylor, who wrote a book of poetry called Rhymes for the Nursery, published in 1806. In 1838 the poem was first published with the tune in The Singing Master: First-Class Tune Book.
But what about that tune? It’s French and apparently anonymous, originally used for a poem titled “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman,” or “La Confidence,” in which a young woman confides in her maman about an incident in the woods when she meets up with a young man whom she’s been sighing over. He takes advantage of her weakness, saying, “If you wait too long, you will regret it.” And so, she “fell into his arms.” Nothing at all graphic here, but the story wasn’t considered fitting for children to sing, so a new version was written for the tune in which a child tells her mother that candy is better than logical reasoning. At that point the tune became associated with nursery rhymes and not with love poetry, so it was used for several others besides “Twinkle, Twinkle,” including the “Alphabet song” and “Baa-Baa Black Sheep.” For those of us who have struggled at one time or another with playing the piano, our clearest memories of this tune may come from the set of twelve fiendishly-difficult variations that Mozart wrote. I don’t think I ever got past the first five or six, as they get progressively more fiendish. Alas!
I can’t, of course, neglect to quote from the Lewis Carroll version of the poem. (You’re always safe quoting Lewis Carroll!) The Mad Hatter sings:
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
(Why is the Hatter mad? Ah, that’s a whole other story, one which you will have to look up for yourself.)
And since we’re in Wonderland, perhaps you’ll indulge my including the parody of another song about stars, “Soup of the Evening,” sung by the Mock Turtle. The original is “Star of the Evening,” by someone named James M. Sayles, and I have a feeling that Carroll didn’t like him and/or his verse. Here’s the first stanza from Sayles:
Beautiful star in heav’n so bright ,
Softly falls thy silv’ry light,
As thou movest from earth afar,
Star of the evening, beautiful star,
Star of the evening, beautiful star.
But the Mock Turtle sings:
Beautiful soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen.
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup,
Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!
I have to include the last verse because of the funny rhyme:
Beautiful soup, Who cares for fish,
Game or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for twoP
ennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?
I originally sang an arrangement of this song in a concert back in the fall of 2017 with my beloved choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, in a most unusually-themed program, “Starry, Starry Night.” No, it had nothing to do with Christmas–we did another concert in December. The arranger of our piece was Daniel Elder, a very young man, born in 1986, who has been writing compositions and winning awards since 2009. His version is gorgeous–and difficult. It’s a cappella, and we struggled mightily to stay on pitch. In the end it was very rewarding, though. And since I revised this article in October 2020 and so many in-person concerts had been cancelled (including ours), I’m using as the performance video a virtual choir version from a high school choir that does, as far as I can tell, stay on pitch:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the trav’ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.
In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro’ my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.
‘Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav’ller in the dark,
Tho’ I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
If you had been around in 1902 and invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII (“Bertie” to his friends), you would have heard the premier performance of Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, always known by its opening words: “I Was Glad.”
Psalm 122 in the Jewish Bible is one of a group of Psalms (songs) usually called “Psalms of ascent.” Scholars disagree on what exactly the word “ascent” refers, but the idea that’s usually listed first is that these psalms were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to participate in various festivals in the Jewish calendar. Jerusalem is built on several hills (one of which had the name “Zion,” sometimes used to refer to Jerusalem as a whole), so you would indeed be ascending as you made your approach into the city.
No. Your shinbone is named after an ancient Greek wind instrument, sort of like a flute.
Everybody got that? Maybe it’s just me, but I’m very distractible. So it’s good for me to get that out of the way. What does “tibi” mean? Basically, “to you.” Latin nouns and pronouns have various forms that determine their use in a sentence so that you don’t have to use a preposition. And you don’t have to worry about word order. You just have to learn all six types (called “cases”) of nouns and pronouns. Then you have to learn tense, voice and mood for each verb, and degrees of comparison for each adjective . . . and don’t get me started on the adverbs. It’s very complicated. How did the Romans have time to conquer the world when they had to learn all this grammar? Beats me.
So, last night we had the family over to watch the Broncos win over the Chargers (this post was originally written in October 2016), and I was telling my father-in-law about my choir’s upcoming Christmas concert with the Denver Brass, and how they’d be playing with us for the Rutter Gloria, among other pieces, and since he’s a former brass player himself he was quite interested. He looked through the copy I had sitting on the coffee table, taking note of the instrumentation, and then he read the intro material. “Guess where this was first performed?” he asked. “Somewhere in England,” I said. “Nope. Omaha, Nebraska.”
First a little background on the song itself. Harlech Castle was built in northern Wales by Edward I of England in the late 1200’s after he put down a Welsh rebellion against his rule. Harlech then became embroiled in the Wars of the Roses that raged between the houses of Lancaster and York in the 1400’s. From 1461 to 1468 the Lancastrians managed to hold onto the castle even as other strongholds fell to the Yorkists. Edward IV finally got fed up and ordered a huge army to besiege the castle, which surrendered after a month. This siege is often described as lasting for seven years, which is, we will charitably say, a slight exaggeration. The song originates from these events, but there are several versions and none of them was written before the 1800’s. It’s interesting to note that this stirring paean to freedom and bravery is actually about a civil war. One version includes the words “Now the Saxon flees before us . . . Britain wins the field!” So the Yorkists were seen as equivalent to the Saxon invaders of centuries before, but it’s fair to point out that the Lancastrians were being helped out by the French. Hmmm. Anyway, howe’er it was, the song itself is stirring and dramatic, and it’s very popular as a regimental march and is used in an adapted form by several Welsh football (er, rugby) teams.