The Coventry Carol
December 29, 2015
THE 16th-century carol is sung here by The Sixteen. A description of the carol and another recording can be found here:
The “Coventry Carol” is a Christmas carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was performed in Coventry in England as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The lyrics of this haunting carol represent a mother’s lament for her doomed child.
— Comments —
Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:
The Coventry Carol is my favorite off all the carols. I love the choral version, with its intricate layers of voices and medieval melody. I love the way it turns into a major key at the very end, giving hope to the terrible story. I’ve sang it many times in my English school choirs, as a soprano, but here is Charlotte Church, when she was a young teenager, before she got all commercialized and sexualized, singing it in a young female’s voice, without the trills and vibratos of a mature soprano. Charlotte sounds like a boy soprano, but then we hear glimpses of her maturing female voice. In fact, some original versions indicate that one of the verses be sung by female voices.
I can imagine the young Mary singing it to her infant child.
Here is a forceful “modern” version. It is hard to imagine that this was composed in the middle of the modernist, anti-art, period of the early 1920s. But, choral music composers, with music’s veneration of God, could NOT produce ugly dissonant music. Look at all those fidgety young boys, all disciplined!
I’ve always loved how after the end of each verse, the musical phrase would finish off in a major key:
The Coventry Carol also contains a much cited example of the Tierce de Picardie (Picardy Third). This is where the final chord of a phrase or melody in a minor key is replaced with the tonic major. Conventional wisdom would have it that shifting from minor to major in this way would produce an uplifting effect.
The quote ends with:
Interestingly, in The Coventry Carol, the sharpened final note of the melody (on the world “slay” in the second verse) sounds more desperate and anguished than anything.
[Quote Source]
Such is musical superiority.
If you have time, here is more detailed information on the carol’s “evolution.”
