December 02, 2010

No sweeter sound than this is heard


Guerrieri: Rejoice, Rejoice! (PDF, 87 Kb; plastic-imitation MIDI here)

It's Christmas carol time. This one sets a text by William Chatterton Dix, better known for writing "What Child Is This?" (Surely the most leading question in Christmas carol history, outpacing "Do You Hear What I Hear?" by a wide margin. I've always wanted to hear a version of "What Child Is This?" where the baby isn't Jesus. Twist ending!) Dix was also the manager of an insurance company, which makes him the Charles Ives of hymn-writers, I suppose. At any rate, this carol manages to be both cheerful and consistently unsettled, which is how I imagine pretty much everybody spends their holiday season.

By the way, previous years' carols can now be accessed with the handy "Carol" tag at the bottom of this post. Four years on, and I've finally come around to blog tags! To be fair, the tags put a bit of strain on my 2400 baud modem.

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