![]() Many of these tracks were great arrangements already in our music library, such as the two Catalan folk songs, La filadora (The spinner) and Nit de vetlla (A night of watching), both arranged by Goff Richards. These are songs based on the Christmas story, but whose origins are in traditional melodies passed down anonymously through folk traditions across the world. We hope that these tracks will be known to many listeners, perhaps even well enough for you to join in! They also form the backbone to this album, which then draws in strands from lots of different parts of our library, all united by that magical atmosphere of festive wonder.Īs well as Christmas music written for church services, it was important to us to capture a flavour of what we call ‘Christmas folk music’. Less familiar perhaps, but also belonging to that great sacred choral canon are Tomás Luís de Victoria’s motet O magnum mysterium (O great mystery) and Tomorrow shall be my dancing day, which was composed by King’s College’s legendary Director of Music (and mentor to our forebears in The King’s Singers) Sir David Willcocks. These include Once in royal David’s city, Ding dong! merrily on high and O little town of Bethlehem. Dotted throughout the album are several of the most famous English church carols, which take the six of us right back to our earliest singing days, and which also reflect our group’s heritage at King's College, Cambridge. This selection of music covers everything from contemporary choral gems and folk songs through to well-loved carols. In Christmas Carols with The King's Singers, we wanted to bottle that frosty, moonlit, fireside Christmas wonder and pour it into our sound. Christmases as a child were a time of magic and mystery: from the drama of the biblical nativity story, through to the excitement of Father Christmas’ visits and the excitement of hoping for snow in December, the season always seemed to hold a sense of wonder-and its music captures this unlike anything else can. For the six of us, festive carols and songs are part of the soundtracks of our lives and have been since childhood. Even if you’re not vocally-inclined, choral music still lies at the heart of many people’s Christmases. The name of a member of my choir is Rossella, which people often pronounce Rozella she very urgently corrects them, instructing them on the difference between the unvoiced double s and the voiced single s.If you are a singer of any kind-be that in a church choir, as a soloist, in a professional group, or if you simply like a singsong in the shower or after a glass of wine-the chances are that Christmas music is in your blood. By the way, the spelling Osanna is found often in Renaissance sources. Though the Liber does not address this, I always cultivate an Italian hard c and k without aspiration the English overdo the opposite: Khhhee-rie. It is spelled nichil in medieval spellings. Mihi and Nichil as miki and nikil depend upon a pre-classical and continuing vernacular pronunciation in the classical period. The Roman pronunciation includes the silent h and "slightly voiced" s between two vowells. In England it is not slippage, it is a matter of pride to keep certain British pronunciations of Latin. In every country, there is slippage thus in France, one often hears Italian consonants and slightly French vowels. This was recommended by Christoph Bernhard in the seventeenth century and was propagated by Abbot Guerranger as an aspect of his ultramontanism it is now represented by the rules for pronunciation in the Liber Usualis. JavaScript is disabled in your browser, so the "routine reminders" do not appear.Ĭhurch Latin is simply Roman Latin.I honestly don't know, but it seems like it's a bit more complicated than 'don't pronounce h except in mihi and nihil'. Maybe just a traditional emphasis on 'hic, haec, hoc'? And like Andrew, even though our schola follows the rules about 'h', we never sing 'oc', 'aec', or 'ic'. (and maybe there are, I just don't know). ![]() If that's true, why didn't the 'haitches' disappear also? Why don't we have manuscripts with 'aec dies' and 'odie Christus natus est'. ![]() The point here is that the scribes wrote what they heard, not what they were supposed to write: 'ae' sounded like 'e', so they just wrote 'e'. I mostly agree with everyone about 'h', but let me play Devils' Advocate by giving an example.Īrchaic Latin diphthong 'ai' ,pronounced 'eye', became in Classical Latin 'ae', still pronounced 'eye', although as the centuries went by, it started to be pronounced "ay", and then was written simply 'e', which gives us things like 'in celum' and the first 'e' in 'e-u-o-u-a-e'.
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