Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, everyone! Christmas lights from the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanical Gardens on 26 Nov 2022. All pics & videos from my iPhone 12 Pro camera.
All musical performances by me. All songs performed on my acoustic guitar (Faith) except for the last round of “O Holy Night,” which I played on my electric guitar (Izabelle).
All musical compositions are in the public domain. No original compositions by me in this video.
Musical Compositions (in order of Appearance):
0:00 “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”
Lyrics by Charles Wesley in 1744.
Melody comes from “Hyfrydol,” a Welsh hymn tune written by Rowland Prichard in about 1844. “Hyfrydol” is a Welsh word meaning delightful, beautiful, sweet, and melodious.
Wesley was an English leader of the Methodist movement and a prolific hymnwriter. In 1744, Wesley considered Haggai 2:7 as he looked at the situation of the orphans and the class divide in Britain. This inspired him to write “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.”
Considering our growing class divide and growing homeless population in America, I considered this a fitting addition to kick off the music for this episode.
1:49 “Deck the Halls”
English lyrics by Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant in 1862.
Melody is traditional Welsh, unknown author, and probably dates back to roughly the 16th century. It comes from the song “Nos Galan” (Welsh for “New Year’s Eve”), a traditional Welsh New Year’s Eve carol published in 1794, although it is likely much older.
2:29 “O Come All Ye Faithful” aka “Adeste Fidelis”
Traditional Christmas carol.
Author(s) of lyrics and melody unknown.
Earliest known printed version appears in a manuscript dating to around 1751 by John Francis Wade (1711-1786).
Authorship has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade, King John IV of Portugal (1604-1656), and anonymous Cistercian monks.
4:11 “Joy to the World”
English Christmas carol.
Lyrics written by English minister and hymnwriter Isaac Watts in 1719. The lyrics are a Christian reinterpretation of Psalm 98.
Music and arrangement by American composer Lowell Mason in 1848.
5:18 “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”
English Christmas carol.
Lyrics by Charles Wesley & George Whitefield in about 1739. (It’s the same Wesley that wrote “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus”. He was truly a prolific hymnwriter!)
Musical composition used was written by William H. Cummings in about 1840, based on his adaptation of the music in “Vaterland, in deinen Gauen” from Felix Mendelssohn’s cantana Festgesang (Gutenberg Cantata). The Gutenberg Cantata celebrates and commemorates Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type.
7:33 “Silent Night” (German: “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”)
Lyrics / poem by Joseph Mohr in 1816.
Music by Franz Xaver Gruber in 1818.
Joseph Mohr, a young Catholic priest, wrote the poem “Stille Nacht” in 1816 in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. On Christmas Eve 1818, Mohr brought the poem to Gruber, a schoolmaster and organist, and asked Gruber to compose a guitar melody for that night’s mass. First performed on Christmas Eve 1818 at St. Nicholas parish church in the small village of Oberndorf in Austria. Repeated flooding eventually destroyed that church, which was replaced by the Silent-Night-Chapel.
9:25 “O Holy Night” (Original Title: “Cantique de Noel”)
Lyrics / poem by French poet Placide Cappeau in 1843.
Music by French composer Adolphe Adam in 1847.
The English version (with minor modifications to the melody) is by John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893), a transcendentalist, America’s first influential classical music critic, and school director.
The first line of the French poem is “Minuit, Chretien, c’est l’heure solennelle” (French for “Midnight, Christian, is the solemn hour”).
The third verse refers to freedom for slavery – Placide Cappeau was an abolitionist. The Catholic Church initially banned this carol because Cappeau was supposedly an atheist and an abolitionist and composer Adolphe Adam was part Jewish. This carol became popular with abolitionists in the United States.
Enjoy!!
