2019-’20 Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival—The Gloucester Wassail For Twelfth Night

The Gloucester Wassail--Waverly Consort

This evening is Twelfth Night, the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany (more about that tomorrow in the last entry of the Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival) and the end of the Christmas Season.  In England especially it was one last eruption of gaiety and mirth before the more somber and sacred reflection of the Epiphany—somewhat analogous to Mardis Gras or Carnival before Lent.

17th Century tenants present the wassail bowl to the Lord of the Manner and his family singing to the accompaniment of bagpipe, flutes, horns, and drums.  The Land Lord was expected to reciprocate with meats, puddings, pies, and other drink including ale and gin or brandy.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance it was the climax of the caroling and street revelry that followed Christmas Day and was marked with dancing, a sexual cavorting—the subject of William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night— and costumed revelry often evoking the Holy King and semi-pagan masquerades. Mostly it was celebrated by caroling for wassail, a hot mulled wine or cider prepared and served in bowls.  Often a landlord’s peasants and tenants came bearing large wassail bowls for the lord of the manor in exchange for lavish gifts of food and other beverages.  So popular was the beverage and custom that there were a number of songs about it that asked—or demanded—the hospitality of the land lord at whose door the carolers appeared.  The most familiar is the gay Here We Come A-wassailing, But there were several others from different regions of the Realm, each of which might variant local lyrics set to any number of folk tunes.

A 19th Century engraving of the Holly King with a wassail bowl riding the Yule Goat on Twelfth Night

The Gloucester Wassail got its current name because folk song collector Cecil Sharp recalled first hearing it sung by William Bayliss of Buckley and Isaac Bennett of Little Sodbury, both in Gloucestershire.  He set down the lyrics combined from his two sources in his 1916 book English Folk Songs, Collected and Arranged with Pianoforte Accompaniment by Cecil J Sharp.

Earlier versions referenced it first being sung around 1780, but it was probably far older.    Forms of the song were printed in 1838 by William Chappell, 1857 by Robert Bell, and 1868 by William Henry Husk.

Another great folk song collector and arranger, Ralph Vaughn Williams, recorded the melody now most commonly sung in 1909 by an anonymous Gloucester man at the Swan Inn in Pembridge, Herefordshire.  Williams first published the carol with those words in 1913, but when he included the song in his 1928 Oxford Book of Carols he used the words by Sharp. In this form it has become a popular piece in Britain.

Celebrating Twelfth Night in modern Gloucestershire.  The Scottish style tartan kilts are inauthentic to the region, but who cares.

The Gloucester Wassail is one of the most forthright in its demands among its cousins.  The final three verses spell it out frankly:

Come butler, come fill us a bowl of the best
Then we hope that your soul in heaven may rest
But if you do draw us a bowl of the small
Then down shall go butler, bowl and all.

Be here any maids? I suppose here be some;
Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!
Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,
And the fairest maid in the house let us all in.

Then here’s to the maid in the lily white smock
Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock
Who tripped to the door and pulled back the pin
For to let these jolly wassailers in.

Waverly Consort with Kay (bottom left) and Michael (bottom center) Jaffee.

Today we feature a recording from the Waverly Consort Christmas directed by Michael Jaffee.  The American early music ensemble which specialized in performing music from medieval and Renaissance times helped fuel a surge of interest in early music over the last half century.  It was founded and led by Michael Jaffee and Kay Cross in New York City in 1960 and the two married a year later.  The loose ensemble of from 5 to 12 performers on period instruments often did shows in carefully researched period costume with songs artfully connected by troubadour or bard poetic narration.  The group officially retired in the early 21st Century.  Michael Jaffee died on June 15, 2019 at the age of 81.

Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival—Fantasia on Christmas Carols

With just two days to go before the official end of the Christmas Season perhaps it is time to take a dive into a longer piece.  Fantasia on Christmas Carols by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams is a beloved staple of British holiday choral music.  First performed at the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford Cathedral in 1912, the twelve minute piece is based on three English folk carols collected by Williams and his friend Cecil Sharp—The Truth Sent from Above, Come All You Worthy Gentlemen. and On Christmas Night All Christians Sing also known as the Sussex Carol.

Hereford Cathedral where Fantaisia on Christmas Carols was first performed at a choral festival in 1912.

Williams was born at Down Ampney, Gloucestershire in 1872, the third child and younger son of the Vicar, the Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams and Margaret Wedgewood.  On his mother’s side he was related to the Unitarian Wedgewood family of porcelain fame and his great uncle was Charles Darwin.  Despite his father’s Anglican orthodoxy he followed his maternal bent embracing religious freethought.  After a brief period of proclaimed atheism as a young man, he settled into what he called “a cheerful agnosticism.”  But he remained fond of the majestic cadences of the King James Bible, and some of the pageantry of Anglican worship, particularly its choral traditions.

Williams was taught piano from the age of five by his aunt Sophy Wedgwood and composed his first short piece soon after.  By the age of 8 he was taking corresponded courses in music from Edinburgh University.  His formal education began as a boarding school pupil at Field House preparatory school in Rottingdean and then at the public school Charterhouse.  He was a fine student and athlete and organized choir concerts.  In 1890 he left Charterhouse to study at the Royal College of Music in London where his affection for English choral music deepened.

But his family expected a University education and after a while left the College of Music to spend three years studying at Cambridge.  He graduated as Bachelor of Music in 1894 and Bachelor of Arts the following year. Then returned to complete his training at the Royal College.

Williams had a small but reliable private income from his Wedgewood relatives which meant that after his education but was free to indecently pursue his musical interests. In 1895 he took a position as organist and choirmaster. At St Barnabas, in the inner London district of South Lambeth for an annual income of £50.  He did not particularly enjoy the work but gained valuable choral experience.  He left the job in 1899, married, and lived on his income after passing the examination for Doctor of Music at Cambridge.  Soon after he published his first compositions.

Soon after the turn of the 20th Century Williams began his folk song collecting trips with Cecil Sharp and Lucy Broadwood that resulted in influential collections being published that helped preserve and elevate traditional music in England.  He would use those songs by incorporating them into major choral compositions or as inspiration for his original works for the rest of his long life.

In 1907 Williams studied for a few months with revolutionary French modernist composer Maurice Ravel who he credited with helping to liberate himself from “the heavy contrapuntal Teutonic manner,” meaning the conventions of Handel, Brahms, and Beethoven that had been drilled into him in his English university education.  But unlike Ravel’s other students, Williams never tried to ape his teacher.  Ravel remarked that he was “my only pupil who does not write my music.”

Ralph Vaughn Williams in 191s, the year after the premier of Fantasia on Christmas Carols.

The results of these combined influences were vigorous new choral pieces.  Among the earliest which cemented Williams growing reputation was Fantasia on Christmas Carols for the 1912 music festival at Hereford Cathedral.  He would go on to compose and/or arrange other Christmas music over the decades including the oratorio Hodie and individual carols like his definitive version of The First Nowell.

William’s musical career was interrupted by World War I in which he first served as an over-age ambulance driver private in France and Greece and later as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on the Western Front where the sound of the guns damaged his hearing which eventually resulted in virtual deafness later in life.

After the war Williams went on to a long career as a composer and conductor.  In addition to his choral work he composed some of the 20th Century’s most beloved British symphonic pieces including A Lark Ascending, the ballets Old King Cole and Job: A Masque for Dancing, several operas, and some film scores.  He was President of the English Folk Dance and Song Society from 1932 until his death.

Williams remained active and productive until his death in 1958 at the age of 85.  He was then regarded as Britain’s most distinguished composer.

One of many recordings of fantasia on Christmas Carols.

This 1966 version of Fantasia on Christmas Carols features the Choir of Guildford Cathedral under the direction of Barry Rose, baritone soloist John Barrow, and the Pro Arte Orchestra.

Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival—O Little Town of Bethlehem

Well it’s the eve of Christmas Eve and time to turn to traditional carols.  Today we feature one of the oldest American carols whose simple melody and humble reverence made it a Sunday school pageant and parlor piano sing-a-long favorite.  The text was written by Phillips Brooks the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia in 1868 and hastily set to the music Americans still sing today by his organist Lewis Redner.

Christian pilgrims enter Bethlehem circa 1890.  Things were not much change there since Philips Brooks visited in 1865

Brooks was inspired by the memory of an 1865 pilgrimage to the Holy Land which included a visit to the Arab village of Bethlehem which he imagined to be virtually unchanged since Biblical times.  Shortly before Christmas he was moved to write a poem about the village and took it to Redner to be set to music for a Sunday school program just days ahead.  After considering setting the poem to an existing hymn tune, a common practice, he was in a near panic on Friday night before the program until he claimed to have been whispered to by an angel in his sleep.  He got up, jotted down a simple melody and created harmonies for the choir the evening before the service.

Philip Brooks in his olater days as Episcopal Bishop of Boston.

Neither Brooks nor Redner expected the song to be remembered past its first performance.  But Philadelphia bookstore owner Richard McCauley heard it, liked it, and printed it as a leaflet for sale.  From Redner that recalled that “Rev. Dr. Huntington, rector of All Saints. Church, Worcester, Mass., asked permission to print it in his Sunday-school hymn and tune book, called The Church Porch.”  Huntington also named the music St. Louis for some reason and it is still identified by that name in American hymnals.    

By the turn of the 20th Century O Little Town of Bethlehem was one of the most popular carols in the United States.  It also made its way to Britain thanks to its inclusion in Episcopal hymnals but in 1906 it was set to a different melody known as Forest Green by Ralph Vaughan Williams from an English folk ballad called The Ploughboy's Dream which he had collected from a Mr. Garman of Forest Green near Ockley, Surrey that tune is now most commonly used in Britain and Commonwealth Countries and has even supplanted the original in some U.S. Episcopal churches.  Later the poem was attached to sill other songs.

Nat King Cole's version first appeared on this 1960 album which was so succeful that it was re-issued under a different title in 1963.  It has also been included on numerous compilations albums issued since then.

But the original is still treasured and sung by Americans.  It has been recorded many times notably by Bing Crosby, Elvis Pressley, and Sarah McLachlan.  But we have a soft spot for the version by Nat King Cole on his 1960 LP The Magic of Christmas and on his 1963 re-issue retitled The Christmas Song.