Riu, riu, chiu

This villancico, or Spanish carol, comes to us from the Aragonese royal court in Valencia in the early sixteenth century. The carol appeared in Villancicos de diversos autores, a 1556 collection of Valencian villancicos published in Venice. Riu, riu, chiu has been attributed to Catalan composer Mateo Flecha the Elder (1481-1553), who worked in Valencia as director of the chapel choir of the Duke of Calabria. The carol’s text, which is possibly by Juan del Encina (1468-1529/30), uses a real Spanish shepherds’ call, “Riu, riu, chiu.” It tells of God, portrayed as a shepherd, protecting the Virgin Mary from Satan, portrayed as a wolf. 

Partamos a Belén

In Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and many other parts of Latin America, groups of carolers, or parranderos, travel from house to house to sing songs of Christmas called aguinaldos. The word aguinaldocan also refer to a Christmas gift: a musical aguinaldois really a gift of music. Sometimes these seasonal greetings are sung unaccompanied, but often instruments are involved, especially the cuatro, a four-stringed Latin American guitar. Partamos a Belén(Let Us Go to Bethlehem) is an aguinaldoby Venezuelan composer César Alejandro Carrillo (b. 1957). Carrillo is a choral conductor and composer who is particularly interested in preserving Venezuelan folk music traditions like the aguinaldo. In his preface to his score, Carrillo explains that his composition teacher “always instilled in us the cultivation of this genre in the repertoire of our choirs and as creative work, in order to preserve it from disappearance before the overwhelming invasion of other musical genres strange to our traditional Christmas holidays.” (Carrillo, Dos alguinaldos venezolanos, Musicarrillo Ediciones, 2018) 

The Huron Carol, or Jesous Ahathonhia, is Canada’s oldest Christmas carol. Its tune is even older than its text: the music first appeared in Italy in the 16th century as a song to a dance rhythm, called La monica. The tune became popular throughout Europe, eventually making it to France as a song called Une jeune fillette, which was transformed into a noël, or French carol, around 1557, with the text Une jeune pucelle. 

The text of The Huron Carol is by St. Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649), a Jesuit missionary to the Huron-Wendat Native peoples in what is now the province of Ontario. Using the tune of Une jeune pucelle, Brébeuf wrote Jesous Ahathonhia, a new hymn in the Wendat language. Brébeuf’s hymn places the Christmas story into the context of Huron-Wendat religious concepts. The 1927 English version by Jesse Edgar Middleton, ’Twas in the Moon of Wintertime, is not a translation of Brebeuf’s text, though it does honor the spirit of the original by using indigenous imagery. 

Go, Tell It on the Mountain

This Christmas spiritual was first cataloged in 1907 by John Wesley Work II (1873-1925). A professor of history at Fisk University, and director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Work was one of the first musicologists to make a scholarly study of African-American spirituals. His book Folk Song of the American Negro, co-written with his brother, composer Frederick J. Work, was one of the first authoritative volumes on spirituals. The Fisk Jubilee Singers had included arrangements of Go Tell It on the Mountain in their repertoire for years before the spiritual was first published in a 1909 anthology. The Work family musical dynasty continued with scholar and composer John Wesley Work III, who wrote a new anthem arrangement of Go, Tell It on the Mountain in 1940. The tradition of anthem arrangements continued with settings by composers like R. Nathaniel Dett and Moses Hogan. 

Mary Had a Baby

This haunting carol was first published in N.G.J. Ballanta-Taylor’s 1925 collection, Negro Spirituals of Saint Helena’s Island. Ballanta-Taylor (1893-1961) was a Sierra-Leonean composer and ethnomusicologist, and one of the first scholars to study spirituals in the context of African musical traditions. The Penn Normal Industrial School of St. Helena, South Carolina, enlisted Ballanta-Taylor in the 1920s to make a special study of African-American spirituals, especially in the Sea Islands. These isolated islands had historically been a center of the Gullah, a community of African-Americans who created a unique culture blending Native American, European, and African languages and traditions. Ballanta-Taylor likely collected this spiritual from Saint Helena Island, off the coast of South Carolina. 

The Sussex Carol

We can thank Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) for the popularity of this English folk carol. The text had been known since 1684, when it was published by Luke Wadding, a Franciscan bishop from Ireland. Many tunes subsequently became attached to Wadding’s text, but the one heard most today comes from the early 20th-century efforts of British composers to collect and transcribe authentic folk music. Vaughan Williams collected the tune known now as The Sussex Carol from the singing of Harriet Verrall, a resident of the village of Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, in Sussex. Vaughan Williams published his arrangement of the tune in his Eight Traditional Carols (1919), and soon it became a classic of the English carol repertory. 

Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen

This lovely carol is sung in English as “Lo, How a Rose E’er-Blooming.” It is thought to come from the diocese of Trier in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This ancient city is located on the western border of modern Germany, near Luxembourg. Both text and tune probably developed gradually as a regional folk carol. It draws on a passage from the biblical book of Isaiah which tells of a “branch coming from the stem of Jesse,” traditionally interpreted as prophecy of the birth of Christ. Since the Middle Ages, the “stem” had frequently been depicted in art as a rose. (You may have heard similar iconography in medieval English carols, like There Is No Rose of Such Virtue.) Es ist ein Ros’ is most frequently sung to a 1609 arrangement for four voices by German composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621). 

The Coventry Carol

Mystery plays, which tell biblical stories through drama and song, originated in the Middle Ages as church-sponsored religious education. By the time The Coventry Carol made its appearance as part of the Coventry Mystery Plays in the 16th century, the tradition had wandered out of the church and become more entertainment than edification. The Coventry plays were presented during Midsummer festivals, performed not by clergy, but by the guilds of the Shearmen and Tailors. The Coventry Carol comes from a mystery play depicting the birth of Christ, where it is sung by the mothers of Bethlehem on the occasion of the Massacre of the Innocents: a story from the gospel of Matthew in which King Herod tries to kill the Christ Child by destroying all the infants in Bethlehem.  

In 1940, The Coventry Carol took on an added poignancy. After the city of Coventry was bombed by Axis forces on November 14, the provost of Coventry Cathedral broadcast a Christmas Day radio message of forgiveness, and then the cathedral choir sang the Coventry Carol from within the cathedral’s ruins. 

The Holly and the Ivy

Evergreen plants like holly have been a fixture of British solstice celebrations since the time of the Druids–in fact, the plant’s name derives from an Old English word for “holy or “sacred.” When Christianity came to the Europe, the church borrowed several pagan traditions for the midwinter Christmas festival: holly, with its blood-red berries and thorny leaves, was used to represent Christ, and evergreen ivy became a symbol of the Virgin Mary. The Holly and the Ivy is a traditional English carol on this topic: its text has appeared in English broadsides since at least 1710, though the carol may be older than that. In the early 20th century, English folk-song scholar Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) collected the carol’s music and text as sung by Mary Clayton of Gloustershire. Published in 1911, this became our standard version of the carol.  

Noël nouvelet

This traditional carol is at least as old as the fifteenth century, when its text was preserved in a French manuscript. The original French poem tells the charming story of a dream which begins with a garden and a rosebud and goes on to reveal the story of the Christ Child. The carol’s final stanza explains that the poem is structured to tell its story in twelve verses, one verse for each of the twelve days of Christmas. The lovely minor-mode tune of Noël nouvelet may be as old as its text. In English-speaking countries, the carol is sometimes sung to the text “Sing We Now of Christmas,” which is such a loose translation of the French that is can be considered a new carol altogether.

Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella

This is a traditional carol from Provençe: its original title in Provençal is Vénès leou vieira la Pieoucelle. French poet Émile Blémont (1839-1927) adapted a French version of this carol in 1901, as Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle! The best-known English versions are based on Blémont’s translation. The text is inspired by traditional Provençal Christmas celebrations, including processions with torches, and the building of cribs (small Nativity scenes) placed inside model villages with tiny figurines called santons (which means “little saints”). The santons generally included the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, the Christ Child, and other members of the nativity story, as well as visiting Provençal villagers (presumably, in this carol’s crib, two of the visitors were named Jeannette and Isabelle).

The tune of Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella, comes from an air à boire (drinking-song) which the French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704) composed for a production of Molière’s farcical play Le Médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in Spite of Himself) in 1666. Charpentier also composed a delightful Messe de minuit pour Noël (Christmas Midnight Mass), which he built from the melodies of old French carols, including our old friend “Une jeune pucelle” from the Huron Carol. Charpentier might be amused to learn that one of his own secular compositions eventually transformed in the other direction, and turned into a carol.

Ding Dong Merrily on High

If this carol tends to get your toes tapping, there’s good reason for that: the tune is actually a raucous Renaissance couples’ dance entitled “Branle de l’official.” The dance first appeared in Orchésographie (1588), a book on social dance by French cleric Jehan Tabourot (1520-1595). (He published the book under the anagrammatical nom de plume Thoinot Arbeau, perhaps because dance treatises were not the typical publications of priests.) Another ordained gentleman, the Rev. George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934), wrote the carol text we now associate with Arbeau’s branle. Woodward was a scholar of Anglican church music who published several collections of carols, including the Cambridge Carol Book (1924), in which “Ding Dong Merrily on High” first appeared with a harmonization by Irish composer Charles Wood (1866-1926). As you may have guessed, the Rev. Woodward was also a devotee of bell-ringing. 

Jin Hi Kim (b. 1957) is both a composer and a virtuoso of the komungo, a historic Korean stringed instrument. She has received commissions from prestigious institutions such as the Kronos Quartet, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Composers’ Orchestra. She has also performed her own compositions throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in her adopted country of America. 

Kim emigrated in 1980, after studying traditional historic court music in South Korea. In her own words, she traveled to the United States because,

“At that time Korea was becoming more interested in Western music than in its own traditions. It was my dream to balance out this attitude and combine Korean and Western instruments in a new kind of music. I need to learn Western music, so I came to the US in 1980. I stayed because of opportunities here to compose and perform.”

— Jin Hi Kim, interviewed in “Coming to America: Composers Speak Out” by Theodore Wiprud

Kim often performs on an innovative electric komungo (the “world’s only” one, as her professional biography notes). She plays it in this mesmerizing performance of her improvisational composition, Pale Blue Dot, with percussionist Gerry Hemingway.

Read more about Jin Hi Kim on her website.

Photograph from JinHiKim.com

“I have never attempted to be ‘new,’ but to be ‘true’ and to be human…Everything that has a soul, everything that has character, everything that is true is beautiful.”

—Ernest Bloch, as recalled by his daughter Suzanne Bloch (quoted in Voices in the Wilderness: Six American Neo-Romantic Composers by Walter Simmons)

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) was born in Switzerland and studied music in Geneva, Frankfurt, Munich and Paris. He developed a personal style rooted both in the Impressionism modeled by his mentor Debussy, and in the expression of his deeply-felt Jewish identity. Bloch came to America in 1916 for a conducting performance, and soon emigrated with his family. He revisited his native country in the 1930s, but due to the the rising influence of Fascism in Europe, Bloch chose to return permanently to the United States. Bloch may be especially well-known to the Oregonian listeners of All Classical, because in 1939 he moved to Portland, and in 1941 he settled in Agate Beach, a coastal village near Newport, Oregon.

Bloch’s suite Poems of the Sea exemplifies his multicultural interests. He composed the suite in 1922 while he was living in Cleveland. He prefaced the work with a quotation from the iconic American poet Walt Whitman: the opening of “In Cabin’d Ships at Sea” from Leaves of Grass. With this American inspiration he weaves the sound of Debussy’s French musical Impressionism and of shtayger, traditional modes used in Ashkenazi synagogue music.

Read more about Ernest Bloch.

“I am a tango man, but my music makes people think, people who love tango and people who love good music. All ballet companies in the world are dancing my works. The jazz people love and enjoy what I do. Chamber groups that play classical repertoire are asking me to write for them.”

—Astor Piazzolla, from Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir, by Piazzolla and Natalie Gorin

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) was three years old when his family emigrated from Argentina in 1924. They settled in Greenwich Village, where he fell in love with jazz. Astor developed into a child prodigy on the bandoneón. As a teen, he returned to Argentina where he studied tango by playing in the cafés of Buenos Aires. He also studied with classical Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. 

In 1954, Piazzolla was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris with renowned composition pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Initially, Piazzolla worried that he should hide his tango experience from Boulanger, but in fact she encouraged his work in that genre. Piazzolla’s mature tango style came to be known as nuevo tango, and its elements are as diverse as Piazzolla’s experience. He fuses jazz, Argentine tango, modernism and counterpoint into a language all his own.

Piazzolla begins to play his bandoneón about halfway through this electrifying performance of his Libertango (composed 1974).

Read more about Astor Piazzolla.

“I came from one country into another…where my head can be erect, where kindness and cheerfulness is dominating, and where to live is a joy and to be an expatriate of another country is the grace of God…I was driven into paradise.”

—Arnold Schoenberg, in “Two Speeches on the Jewish Situation (1934 and 1935),” in Style and Idea: Selected Writings

In 1933, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) became one of many Jewish composers who fled Europe to escape the rising Nazi regime. In addition to Ernest Bloch, there was Kurt Weill who settled in New York, adapting brilliantly to American musical theater. Erich Wolfgang Korngold came to Los Angeles for good in 1938, becoming one of Hollywood’s most influential composers. Lukas Foss was fifteen when his family brought him to America to escape Nazism. Schoenberg ended up settling in Los Angeles like his friend Korngold.

Schoenberg initially felt somewhat out-of-place in his new country: the American music scene found his atonal style less accessible than Korngold’s neo-romantic music. However, Schoenberg did choose to become a naturalized citizen in 1941, and he influenced future generations of composers as a professor of music at UCLA. Schoenberg’s Kol nidre, Op. 39, is one of the most moving pieces he wrote after emigrating to the United States.

Read more about Arnold Schoenberg.

“Janis and I conversed about things that interested us and empathy came up right away, as did the need to really hear one another. I spoke about walking in someone else’s shoes – feeling wise – and how that impacts the strangeness in any relationship.”

—Svjetlana Bukvich, on the creative process behind her music for Janis Brenner’s Once You Are Not a Stranger, from a 2017 interview with Denise Marsa

In 1992, Svjetlana Bukvich received a scholarship to study electronic music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The Bosnian War has been raging in her hometown of Sarajevo for three months, and had effectively destroyed her successful career as a composer and pianist. She brought her scholarship letter to a bus driver evacuating people from Sarajevo, and the driver took her aboard, allowing her to leave safely and emigrate to the United States. In her book In Her Own Words: Conversations with Composers in the United States, Jennifer Kelly describes Bukvich’s music as “the result of an amalgamation of her experiences before the Bosnian War, her immigration to the United States during the war, and her subsequent time in the United States” (p. 195).

Esteemed as an educator and a leading electro-acoustic composer, Bukvich writes music with a unique blend of electronic, classical, rock and world influences, and she frequently collaborates in multimedia projects. In 2017 she wrote the score to Once You Are Not a Stranger, a multimedia dance work for the company Janis Brenner & Dancers, with art installations by Eva Petric. The company’s site explains,

“This interdisciplinary work looks at the ideas of empathy and “otherness” in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious world and uses the dance company as a microcosm of this world.”

Read more about Svjetlana Bukvich on her website.

Photograph from SvjetlanaBukvichMusic.com

“String Quartet No. 5 is based on two very different musical motifs, like two strangers from different cultural backgrounds who meet and become fast lovers. Throughout their courtship, neither of them changes but they get to know and understand each other on a much deeper level. Most importantly, they learn to happily live with each other.”

—Bright Sheng, from his program notes for his String Quartet No. 5, “The Miraculous”

The musical training of composer Bright Sheng (b.1955) began with piano lessons from his mother in his native Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution, when Western arts education was suppressed in China, he studied folk music extensively in the province of Qinghai. After the Cultural Revolution, he attended the Shanghai Conservatory, then emigrated to America in 1982 to study in New York. Sheng met Leonard Bernstein in 1985 and became one of his final students.

An award-winning composer of orchestral music, chamber music, and opera, Sheng’s works have been commissioned and performed by major orchestras all over the world. He is particularly known for integrating Western and Chinese musical ideas in his concert works.

In his program notes for his String Quartet No. 5, “The Miraculous” (2007), Sheng states that part of the work’s inspiration was The Miraculous Mandarin by another émigré composer, Bela Bartók. Sheng explains that while he admires Bartók’s composition, he “[does] not agree with Bartok’s almost-racist interpretation of what he saw as a ‘miraculous Mandarin.’” In his String Quartet No. 5, Sheng chose to create his own sonic concept of the miraculous, built on two motifs that he compares to “strangers from different cultural backgrounds” who “get to know and understand each other.”

Photograph from BrightSheng.com

“I have maintained an independent stand in the way I have syncretized my sounds, I have a blend that I feel very comfortable with and this is very hard to explain to anyone. The sounds emerge from me just the way that my pronunciation of English always has a touch of an accent.”

—Tania Léon, quoted in “Immigration and the American Compositional Dream: Through the Lens of History” by Carol J. Oja

Composer, conductor and educator Tania Léon (b. 1943) emigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1967. She was the founding musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem. In 2010 she founded Composers Now, an organization and music festival dedicated to encouraging new composers and promoting musical diversity. Léon is an award-winning composer, whose works range from music for dance, to chamber music, to her recent opera, The Little Rock Nine.

León’s Alma (Soul) for flute and piano was commissioned in 2007 by Maria Martin. In this wonderful video interview, León explains “what to listen for” in Alma. She compares the flute’s melody to that of a bird in the forest, flying through the piano’s texture like a bird flies through the leaves of a tree. She also explains that through the piece’s title, her image of flight can also reflect the meditative experience of the human soul.

Read more about Tania León.

Photograph from the University of Chicago Department of Music