Song Lyric of the Day (Edmund Hamilton Sears and Richard Storrs Willis, on How ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’)

“It came upon the midnight clear,
  That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
  To touch their harps of gold:
‘Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
  From heaven's all-gracious King.’
The world in solemn stillness lay,
  To hear the angels sing.”—“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” lyrics by Unitarian minister-poet Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876), music by American composer Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900), from American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1: Philip Freneau to Walt Whitman, edited by John Hollander (1993)

Edmund Hamilton Sears wrote these lyrics in 1849, at a point that many contemporary readers might appreciate: a time of public disruption and private depression. The United States was still coming to terms with the nature of its recent victory in the deeply polarizing Mexican War: the vexing       question of whether to admit the newly won territory as free or slave states. At the same time, after a year off because of health issues, he was trying to resume his ministry, this time with a congregation in Wayland, Mass.

On her blog “History? Because It’s Here!” Kathy Warnes has a fine post giving more details on the life and career of Sears, as well as on how Willis and, over in the U.K., Arthur Sullivan wrote melodies to lyrics that hover between hope (the singing of the angels) and despair (“the woes of sin and strife”).

Incidentally, the image accompanying this post is the 1500 painting The Mystical Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445-1501)—the only signed work by the Italian Renaissance master.

Song Lyric of the Day (Christina Rossetti, on Gifts for God ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’)

“What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.”— English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “A Christmas Carol,” in The Complete Poems, text by R.W. Crump, notes by Betty S. Flowers (2001)

The other day, while listening to Christmas music on a local New York area classical music station, WQXR, I heard the deejay identify the author of a carol that I had come to know as “In the Bleak Midwinter” referred to as Christina Rossetti. I was surprised, because, though I had come to know and love the song from Shawn Colvin’s 1998 collection Holiday Songs and Lullabies, I hadn’t recalled a specific identification with any work by the Victorian poet.

Then, as quickly as I could get hold of it, I looked up this particular poem by its famous first line, “In the bleak mid-winter.” It had indeed been written by Rossetti, with Gustav Holst adding the music that transformed this into an enduring holiday song. 

Much to my current regret, a college course I took nearly 40 years ago on Victorian Literature concentrated so much on Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning that it had no time for Rossetti (or, for that matter, her brother, the gifted poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti). What I have read so far in the Complete Poems has convinced me that I should make up for this loss promptly.

Rossetti’s work, deceptively simple, combines both enormous skill with meter and depth of feeling (often, as in the lines I’ve quoted above, with a yearning for the sacred) in nearly every line. Feminist scholars should be congratulated for bringing renewed attention to this poet of stunning purity and beauty.

(The portrait of Christine Rossetti that accompanies this post was created by the poet's brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.)

Song Lyric of the Day (‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’ on ‘The Hopes and Fears of All the Years’)

“O little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.”— “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” lyrics by Phillips Brooks, music by Lewis Redner (1868)

One of my favorite Christmas hymns—and, judging by the number of times it’s been recorded, a favorite of millions around the world—is this song. I knew that I had to blog about it when I read, among the biographical notes in the Library of America’s marvelous anthology American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, that its first public performance occurred 150 years ago today.

The lyricist, Episcopalian minister Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), wrote this for the Sunday school connected to Philadelphia's Holy Trinity Church, which he served as rector. At 6 feet, 4 inches and nearly 300 pounds, Brooks was among the most commanding Victorian preachers in the pulpit but he was gentle and thoughtful with the children of his church.

The Christmas song he wrote for them, inspired by a trip to the Holy Land a few years before, is deceptively simple: easy enough to remember, but with words that resonate just as powerfully with adults. I’m talking especially of these verses: “The hopes and fears of all the years/

Are met in thee tonight.”

Everything, Brooks suggests, is riding on this moment in a humble town. For the first time, God, taking human form, can break the cycle of hate and violence in the world. At last, time can take on new dimensions—a past with its imperfections, a present with perceptible change, and a future that admits, at long last, of progress, unity, and equality of all human beings. (In the Civil War and early Reconstruction period, Brooks had advocated not only emancipation, but also the right of former slaves to vote.)

Song Lyric of the Day (‘O Holy Night,’ With the Lesser-Known Words to a Great Carol)

“Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.”—“O Holy Night,” lyrics by Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight, music by Adolphe Charles Adams (1847)

The image accompanying this post is the painting Adoration of the Shepherds (ca. 1450), by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1430-1506). I chose to highlight this particular portion of the Nativity to illustrate the fact that Jesus’ appearance was not for the elite of the world, but for all who, because of their belief that “His law is love and His gospel is peace,” engage in the personal liberation that begins to change the world.

This Day in Music History (“Silent Night” Played for First Time)

December 25, 1818—One of the most glorious of Christmas carols, “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”), was sung for the first time at St. Nicholas Church in Obendorf, Austria. The lyrics were written by the assistant pastor of the church, Fr. Joseph Mohr, who had taken them to choir director Franz Gruber (pictured), who composed the music the night before.

Countless myths have encrusted the creation and reception of this song, as recounted by Bill Egan. One wishes there was somewhat more documentation on this—the song, after all, was not composed in the time of Shakespeare, when records were kept and preserved indifferently—but then again, I suppose we are lucky to know even what we do about it.

Mohr and Gruber were not, after all, Mozart, Beethoven, or Josef or Michael Haydn, who were all variously believed to be the composers in the first half-century or so after it was created. They had nothing elaborate with which to work—just Mohr’s guitar and the voices of the choir. They never became rich off of a song that people began singing and playing the world over within their own lifetimes. They were simply officials at a village church, with a job to do.

For those of us who work and wonder at the products of our minds, the two men represent a welcome reminder that even ordinary people can create the most extraordinary works.

It’s hard to believe, but the story of these simple, pious men figured in the life of a writer far more famous and far more complicated: Christopher Isherwood, friend of W.H. Auden and author of the “Berlin Stories” that inspired Cabaret. The Weimar Era decadence depicted in that musical certainly described that period in the life of the writer, who early on rejected not only the Anglican faith into which he was baptized but also Christianity and the message of Jesus as a whole.

Throughout his late 40s into his 60s, Isherwood supplemented income from novels with scripts for film and television. None of the latter, oddly enough for someone whose novels burst with colorful detail and insinuating dialogue (for an example, see Mr. Norris Changes Trains), turned out to be particularly memorable.

Except, perhaps, in one small instance, for one small boy: me.

At age eight or nine, I watched one Christmas, on network TV, an hour-long primetime special on how “Silent Night” was composed. From a distance of 40 years, I can’t recall many details about it, aside from the fact that it was a biopic about Franz Gruber.

But a few years ago, while reading the long but often fascinating biography of Isherwood by Peter Parker, I noticed that it mentioned one of his later credits as an expatriate writer-for-hire in Hollywood: a 1968 network special, The Legend of "Silent Night". This must have been the same one I saw. It was shown on TV exactly 150 years to the day when the song was first performed.

At first glance, this struck me as the most incongruous pairing of a religious skeptic and a religious themed script this side of Gore Vidal coming aboard to work on the epic Ben-Hur. It could only have been a job, no more.

On second thought, however, I wondered. True, Isherwood never re-embraced the faith of his childhood. But after he came to the United States with Auden, he experienced a search for meaning that led him to convert to Hinduism, a spiritual journey he chronicled in My Guru and His Disciple. (The “guru” of the title was Swami Prabhavanda.)

That experience, I think, gave him an entrée, a point of sympathy between himself and Gruber, that would not have been possible otherwise—for Isherwood eventually came to translate several Hindu texts into English, including Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God. He had now become intimately familiar with the struggle that the creative artist faces in explaining to others not similarly gifted nor religiously inclined how the deity he embraces has altered his life.

I did not find any tape of this 1968 special in the catalog of the Paley Center for Media. Too bad: the credits (including Isherwood’s) meant little or nothing to me at the time, but nowadays any such array of talent, no matter how seemingly modest the project, would have to be regarded as all-star: narration by Kirk Douglas, music by Alex North (the scores for A Streetcar Named Desire and Spartacus), directed by Daniel Mann (Come Back, Little Sheba), teleplay by Isherwood and Harry Rasky, based on “The Story of Silent Night” by Paul Gallico, and starring James Mason as Gruber.

The Paul Gallico source material raises an interesting question. The sportswriter-turned-popular-novelist retailed a story that had little if any relation to fact: i.e., that “Silent Night” was originally performed with a guitar because the vital parts of the organ at St. Nicholas had been eaten away by mice! A great anecdote, certainly lending itself to the kind of dramatic detail Isherwood would have relished. Did the Hindu convert put this detail in his script?

I don’t know, but it’s certainly worth finding out—something that would be easier to do if those in Hollywood wake up to the interesting creative property they undoubtedly have buried in some vault.