Day One - O Come, O Come, Emanuel

This is a new project for me! Inspired by The Artsy Honker's 12 days of Christmas recording project last year, and an old tradition of mine of making an online advent calender with something creative under each 'door', this year I've decided to make some recordings of Christmas carols and post them publicly over the month of December.  I'm almost certainly not going to manage to post a new recording every day of advent, but I hope to get a good selection of recordings up.

My heritage is Jewish, and I've spent more or less my whole life singing Christian music - I have a complicated relationship with Christmas music that I will maybe go into in more detail as the project goes on. But it comes down to the fact that I love the music of carols and the history of them. I've got a background in early music, and a love of mediaeval and metaphysical poetry and you'll certainly hear those influences through the month.

Today isn't the first of December, but it is the first Sunday of Advent, which seems as good a time as any for this more-or-less agnostic Jew to start this project.

My first recording is my own arrangement of O Come, O Come, Emanuel. This is an advent carol, so an appropriate starting point. I've loved it when I first sang it aged about six, because it has my name in it! I also love the fact that it's a carol looking forward to a promise of the Messiah, rather than one which focusses on birth and redemption - a very Jewish sort of a carol. There's something Jewish in the tune of it as well, despite it's origin in the music of probably French monks some time between the 8th and the 12th century...

The main part of this recording, the tune of the carol, was sung in one take with no pitch reference - I haven't used any pre or post recording tricks to keep the tuning. Yes, that's me singing all the parts. The descant in the final verse is loosely based on the Wilcocks arrangement. There's a few more seconds of silence on the beginning of the track than their should be, if you don't want to listen to silence you can start playing at 0.18...






O Come, O Come, Emanuel by Jessie Holder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

O come, O come, Emanuel
Redeem thy captive Israel
That into darkest drear has gone
Far from the face of God's dear son

Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, thou branch of Jesse, draw
The quarry from the Lion's claw
From the dread caverns of the grave
From nether hell thy people save


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, thou Lord of David's key
The royal gate swing wide and free
Dispel the long night's lingering gloom 
And pierce the shadows of the tomb


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel

O come, O come, Adonaï

Who, in thy glorious majesty
From that high mountain, clothed in awe
Gavest thy folk the elder law


Rejoice! Rejoice! 
Emanuel shall come to thee,
O Israel