General Notes about Carols

Like the madrigal, the carol’s origins extend well back into the Middle Ages, and the term carol refers to (at least) two distinct musical genres. The older tradition refers to a strophic song rooted in a particular French peasant dance cultivated during the 12th century. Its form—a refrain followed by successive verses, each interspersed with repetitions of the opening refrain—was shared by many other song types; perhaps its more characteristic feature was the preponderance of Christmas (Nativity) themes in the lyrics. In that respect, too, lies the medieval carol’s strongest link with the post-Reformation version, which generally sounds a far cry from its mystical, polyphonic forebear. During the early 19th century the modern carol achieved broad appeal by setting vernacular Christmas texts—thus finding resonance with Europe’s ever increasing sense of ethnic and national identities. The carols we know occasionally sound like an echo from the genre’s distant past, but the simple four-part harmonies applied during the 19th century diluted the songs’ aesthetic power in the quest for large-scale public consumption (Fa-la-la-la!).
Tonight’s selections summon up the carol’s medieval French roots. Noël nouvelet, an anonymous work dating to the early 1500s, exists today in many versions. The original may have contained as many as thirteen verses, and differing regions retained only those verses that best accorded with local theology. All versions retain the Dorian-mode melody, which quotes the famous plainchant Ave Maris Stella Lucens Miseris; you may know it as “Now the Green Blade Rises.” Eustache du Caurroy (1549-1609) was a prominent composer of secular and sacred vocal music at the end of the Renaissance, though he was also influential on the early French school of organ playing. His motet-like Noel, with its long phrases and imitative entries, shows how close the medieval carol eventually came to the polyphonic style of the High Renaissance. The classic carol Angels We Have Heard on High is heard tonight in a well-known translation and harmonization from the early 20th century, though it comes from the old French tune Les Anges dans nos campagnes. Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella originated in 16th-century Provence and was a courtly dance rather than a carol at its start.

(c) Jason Stell