Tea at Trianon: Christmas is Coming

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Christmas is Coming

From Debra Esolen at Word and Song:

As I have mentioned before, Sometimes a Song is written by that most prolific of composers, Anonymous. Most of what we know as folk tunes were written by that same fellow (also known by his nickname, “Anon”). When it comes to bringing together poems (or in the case of this week’s song lyrics, nursery rhymes) and music and then passing those along through the generations not by recordings but by general knowledge, the result may be many variations on a single song.

We call it folk music when a song seems to have sprung from a time so distant no one can really trace it and yet has become known widely in an area, a nation, and perhaps even around the world. Word & Song readers of a certain age will undoubtedly recognize my choice for this week as a carol once commonly sung at Christmastime in all English-speaking lands. I believe I first learned the song as a school child, in music classes I look back on with great fondness now, so culturally and socially formative they were. And it wasn’t that we merely learned carols and anthems and folk songs in school, either. For “Christmas is Coming” is not just a folk song like any other: it is a special kind of folk song called a round, and a round is a subset of what in formal music is called a canon.

I hope that in our times little children are still taught to sing rounds in school, but my experience (and this may be only my experience) tells me otherwise. How many of you remember singing rounds in school? Raise your hand if you do! Yes, in the classroom — not just in a school choir — we sang what most folks haven’t heard in decades and decades, a special kind of musical canon simple enough for children to master but enjoyable for people of all ages even with no formal training. A canon is a composition wherein a tune is repeated over and over with different singers or instruments or sections of performers coming in a different times like an echo, and yet blending harmoniously. And that’s why teaching children to sing in rounds is such a wonderful way to introduce them to harmony and choral singing together in parts. (Read more.)