O Come, O Come Emmanuel (trad; Roud 26895) Week 246, 30 November 2025 скачать в хорошем качестве

O Come, O Come Emmanuel (trad; Roud 26895) Week 246, 30 November 2025

Today is Advent Sunday in the church's calendar, the start of the Christian season of Advent: a time of preparation for and looking forward to the celebration of Christ's birth at Christmas. So my theme for the rest of this year will be of traditional songs of the Christmas season, of which there are very many. "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" is in many ways the original and archetypal advent carol (I sang a version of this earlier today in my church choir's Advent Carol service), dating back in origin over 1,000 years and with each verse starting with the beseeching wish for deliverance "O come...". "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" is more of a church carol than a folk song really, but it's got a Roud number, and the Watersons and other folk artists have sung it, so that's good enough for me (and it's certainly more than old enough). "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" originates in the “O antiphons”, dating back to the 8th or 9th century, sung in monasteries in the days leading up to Christmas. In the 12th or 13th century, an anonymous author made a Latin metrical hymn out of five of these antiphons. This hymn was translated into English from the 12th/13th century Latin by Rev. J.M. Neale in 1851. John Kirkpatrick noted that "Neale’s words are full of fabulously obscure references, impenetrable to any but the most ardent Biblical scholar." Many modern hymnbooks prefer a later translation by T.A. Lacey, but I have stuck close to J.M. Neale's, which is the version I remember singing as a young choirboy in "Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised". The melody most often used with the song (to the extent that the melody is called 'Veni Emmanuel') was first linked with this hymn in 1851 by Thomas Helmore, who gave its source as "From a French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon." - but no-one has been find that. In 1966 British musicologist Mary Berry solved the mystery* by finding a 15th-century manuscript containing the melody in the National Library of France - the melody used by Helmore is found here with the text "Bone Jesu dulcis cunctis" [Goodbye sweet Jesus to all]. (*unless perhaps there is an older manuscript or missal still to be found elsewhere...) I learnt this many years ago as a young choirboy, but refreshed my memory of the words, mainly from "Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised". I have varied some of the timings slightly, rather than sticking to exactly the same note length in each verse, where I felt that suited the words. I also listened to The Watersons version on their album "Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy". For more notes and info see: https://mainlynorfolk.info/watersons/... This song has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,...