Our Christmas programme, Medieval Song for Christmas, contains festive music from late medieval England (the carols, Nowell, sing we; This yool; Lullay, I saw; Alma redemptoris mater); thirteenth-century Italy (the lauda, Venite a laudare) and an instrumental piece in lai form. In addition, we have included a version of the well-known Latin song from France, Orientis partibus, and the English dance-like song, Gabriel, fram heven-king. The collection is rounded out with one of our favourite pieces, Polorum regina, the Marian song from Spain that so well expresses medieval wonder.

What people are saying about ANIMA's CD, Medieval Song for Christmas:

". . . I have not a single difficulty recommending this disc. The forces are employed intelligently, the succession of pieces is good, and the affect of the music is well wrought. ". . . their effectiveness as an ensemble is undeniable. Hill's voice . . . is 'high and clear,' and accurate . . . Unruh is a sensitive and inventive vielle player . . . "In sum, this is a good recording."

Randall Rosenfeld
Toronto Early Music News

". . . a delightful collection of seasonal music. Together they capture a feeling of devotion, combined with just a hint of religious ecstasy."

James Young
Early Music Society of the Islands

"Vancouverites Janice Hill and Pat Unruh give this material, mostly from England, a street-level twist, conveying a sense of how ordinary people celebrated in the Middle Ages."

Ken Eisner
The Georgia Straight

"This is a lovely disc, charming in its purity and simplicity. Singer Janice Hill has a voice of colour and character that warmly fills the resonant, cathedral-like acoustics. Pat Unruh's vielle and recorder accompaniments are full of interest and variety . . ."

Theodore Deacon
Seattle Early Music Guild

". . . I liked Unruh's vielle playing, and the acoustic is nicely reverberant."

Lloyd Dykk
The Vancouver Sun

"With the recent popularity in ancient music, Medieval Song for Christmas is likely to be very popular."

Margot Barton
Burnaby NewsLeader

From MUSICK (Quarterly Journal of Early Music Vancouver) October '95:

Medieval Song for Christmas

In medieval Europe, a high degree of religious joy at Christmas time went well with people's desire for revelry to enliven what was often a claustrophobic season. The religious festival was a highly sociable time of extended celebration, as the following description tells us:

This King Arthur lay at Camelot upon Christmas
With many lovely lords, the best of them,
For certain, from the Round Table, that entire rich brotherhood,
With right rich revel and careless mirth.
At times, there tourneyed there many knights,
Gentle knights jousting full well;
Then they rode to the court, to sing and dance carols.
For there, the feast was itself a full fifteen days,
With all the food and the mirth that men could devise,
So much noise and merriment, glorious to hear,
Sweet din by day, dancing by night.
All was happiness in high degree in halls and chambers,
Among the lords and ladies . . .

- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 37-49

What a rich scene this is: King Arthur's Christmas court, as imagined in fourteenth-century England by the Gawain poet. Even with its romantic exaggeration, it provides an engaging glimpse of Christmas feast time in the late Middle Ages. At a later point in the poem, the writer portarys his characters attending the Christmas service in the castle's private chapel, always the solemn high point of the Christmas festival.

For medieval people, there were several elements that came together during the Christmas season: first, of course, there was the central theme of medieval Christendom, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, who was to save them. People would attend the elaborate services in their churches and chapels and perform popular pious song at home. Antiphons, carols, and laude extolled not only the holy birth, but also the miracle of the mother's virginity, and her loving presence. The scope of the medieval religious imagination was wide: there are dance songs recounting the Annunciation; carols for the triumph of the holy birth and for mankind's gratitude; and lullabies for the sleeping Holy Child. The Italian lauda, a strophic song popular with the city guilds and religious confraternities, often invites members to come and sing praises to the Virgin Mother, and there is one song, from a French source, in which the story of the Wise Men is sung (in Latin) from the point of view of an ass carrying precious gifts for the Holy Child. The same imagination can be found at the church pulpit: for example, sermons of the fifteenth-century Dominican English preacher John Mirk show that popular piety, strong in the Middle Ages, was encouraged by tales of Scripture, saints and miracles, along with some jokes. It proves that preaching has always been well served by a good story.

A second important element of Christmastide was its convivial feasting. People met for this in large gatherings, at aristocratic courts, within a family or group of friends, and those in holy orders would also have special celebrations within their monastery. At banquet times, instrumental music and dance music could be provided by minstrels hired for the occasion. The type of music played in this situation was probably improvised and memorized by the players, who would never have learned to read music notation. Modern performers of this type of music have to study the few examples that by chance found their way, six hundred years ago, onto the written page, and then they must re-create their own improvised forms. At the medieval Christmas feast, any banquet guest might suddenly have been called upon to provide some entertainment in the hall - a recititation or a song. Occasionally, this could cause great alarm, as conveyed in the English poem whose speaker urges everyone to "tie up their cows" should he actually be required to sing! In the monastic refectory, entertainment must have been similar to its secular counterpart, for at Christmas time some religious institutions record payments to minstrels for their services. The fifteenth-century English polyphonic carol (two- and three-voiced strophic settings of verses with a refrain-like "burden") had its place here within the monastery as processional music. There are so many carols, however, whose repeated burdens exhort people to "join in and sing" that it is probable that the songs were also "recreational" or feast-time music.

Feasting was a way to pass the dreariness of long, dark winter nights. And connected with this is a third aspect of the medieval Christmastide that is less chronicled, but ever-present as an undercurrent: the strong, ancient awe of the enshrouding darkness, and celebration of the period around the solstice that was actually the turning point of the year on its way to renewal. Symbols connected with the older, pagan religions - such as the yule log, and holly and ivy - had persisted as accoutrements for Christian festivities, adding their dimension to the story of renewal. These old ideas appear in the Christmas songs, bearing additions that make them more "ideologically correct", so that a fifteenth-century carol about "holly and ivy", for example, will carry extra verses that explain the old symbols in terms of Christian allegory. The dreary stillness of winter,and the gloom of spirit that it brings on, become a point of debate in the thirteenth-century English poem, The Owl and the Nightingale. The dolorous owl and the joyous nightingale have been arguing the value of their respective songs, when the discussion takes us into the night-time and the wintry-wood, where the owl's hooting is a solace for forlorn hearts:

"Owl!" said the Nightingale, "why behavest thou so, ever chanting in winter thy song of Woe? . . . When snow lies deep both far and wide, and hardships are the lot of all, then dost thou sing from evening to dawn . . ."

"When the long nights come, bringing frost severe and hard . . . then am I active: I frolic and sing, amusing myself with my chanting . . . I bring comfort to many beings who in themselves are without any strength, such as are anxious and very miserable, in eager longing for some warmth. For them I often sing the more, to lessn something of their pain."

- The Owl and the Nightingale, lines 411-538

In this dark setting, pious medieval people were well cheered by the Christmas season; for, as is described in one famous English composition, "Gabriel, fram hevene-king", the promise of renewal has been made by the angel Gabriel to Mary, through the coming of her Holy Son. This promise is not just for a renewed year, but for eternity, and people hear the news in song with the lightness of dance.

©1995 Pat Unruh

Artwork and Lettering by Frits Jacobsen