Like every Christmas the music and hymns that have been repeated for centuries and that recall the exultation of Christianity are back, but it wasn't always like this.
Performed in various languages, in Italy also in dialect, they are the most popular mystery of Christmas Eve and most of these songs "shepherdesses" in Italian, "christmas carols" in German, "Carolis” in Anglo-Saxon countries they focus mainly on the event and its protagonists.
The most frequent theme is that of poverty, as in the case of the shepherd boy " You come down from the stars" of Sant' Alfonso de' Liguori (1696-1787).
Some of these songs have only a very distant relationship with Christmas. One glorifies King Wenceslaus, the patron saint of Czechoslovakia, killed out of jealousy by his brother Boleslaus on the door of a chapel in 929.
The feast of Saint Stephen, which the text commemorates, falls as we know on the day after Christmas.
Christ was born on Christmas day announces an Anglo-Latin chant, even if the Bible does not mention the day or season of Christ's birth. However, the winter solstice had long been celebrated with joyful dances and the Christians, around 330, chose this period as the most suitable setting for the love celebration of the birth of Christ.
Thus, the pagan winter festivals of many countries could be absorbed into many songs. The Holley and the Ivy (The holly and the ivy) takes up a fertility rite from the pre-Christian era. And there is a trait of paganism in Boar's Head Carol (Hymn to the boar's head), which refers to the ancient Nordic custom of sacrificing a young wild boar during these holidays.
One of the oldest chants, still in use, is Natural strings (Born from the heart) of the 1223th century Spanish monk, Prudentius. But it was St. Francis of Assisi who imbued the Latin formalism of the Church with popular human warmth. On Christmas Eve of XNUMX, on the top of a wooded hill near Rieti, in Greggio, St. Francis also composed the first crib.
The songs were immediately accompanied by popular dances which filled the intervals between one act and another. So pleasing were these happy interludes to the audience that at least once, in Chester, England, actors were manhandled and the stage destroyed by worshipers who wanted more singing. When singing was separated from acting, this genre began to have an immediate success. For the first time, people sang religious songs in the other language, which was extremely revolutionary, perhaps adding a few Latin verses.
Among this medieval hybrids stands out In sweet jubilation, in German Latin, first heard of love, according to legend, by the XNUMXth-century mystic Heinrich Suso, whose austere study was invaded by a host of singing and dancing angels.
In England alone, at least a thousand Christmas hymns flourished between 1400 and 1600, the golden age of carols. Cities had their own Waits (public singers) and theirs wassailer (private singers from hurray!), who sang the glad tidings in the rich palaces. But in the seventeenth century the Puritans smelled the stench of sulfur, more previously they believed they saw the hand of the devil in these cheerful community celebrations.
In 1647 the feast of Christmas was abolished by the English Parliament. The churches were stripped of their ornaments, and the organs taken away, and religious songs became psalms.
In the XNUMXth century, some scholars combed the countryside, in whose remotest corners there were still the wassailers with their songs. Scholars published the texts, thus saving very famous songs such as The First Nowell, Gold Rest You Merry, Gentleman.
Although famous composers from Bach to Britten have dealt with the music of Christmas hymns and although there are lyrics by famous authors such as Longfellow and Noyes, many beautiful carols have been composed by illustrious unknowns. The words of Shite Shepherds Watched were written by Nahum Tate of Dublin, who died while fleeing from his creditors. And the solemn Adeste faithful it was the figment of the imagination of John Wade, a copyist at the English College in Douai, France.
Some of the most beautiful Christmas hymns come from Germany. Martin Luther he remembered how, as a teenager, he went with his friends from house to house, from village to village, intoning popular songs in four-voice harmony. Faith and music for the great reformer; he is credited with composing the text and music Von Himmel hoch (From Above).
Austria gave us the most famous chant Stille Nacht (Silent Night) which owes its birth to a fortuitous case.
In 181, just before Christmas, so the legend goes, mice had gnawed at the bellows of the Oberndolf church organ, and a Christmas without music seemed inevitable. Thus it was that the parish priest Franz Gruber had a melody composed that could be played with only the guitar.
Even today the songs are with us only a short time but are still a vital part of our culture.
