It is Christmas, a Christian holiday observed and sanctioned by the secular French state. France, a country once rich in Christmas traditions, now pretends that today is but another perk from the secular socialist goodie bag.
Humanists wrongly claim that today harks back to pagan solstice celebrations or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti or Mithraism. As if paganism put things beyond the taint of religion. Dear reader, please be assured that today is not some re-tooled pagan toga party nor is it the culmination of an eight-week shopping spree. Today is Christmas. And whatever the coincidences in time and expediencies of history, Christmas is a celebration of the the birth of l'Enfant Jésus, a Jew who is the Christ, le Fils de l'Homme, Prince de la Paix, le Roi des Rois, le Modèle divin et humain, Miroir de l'Éternel -- these few from among His many titles. You are, of course, free to believe in le petit Jésus or no, but, unless you are intellectually false or politically dishonest or just plain stupid, you are not free to pretend Christmas is something other than what it is.
Here at Pave we celebrate Christmas for what it is.
Christmas has some of its most beautiful expressions in music. The French catalogue ranges from the joyous polyphonic In Nativitatum Domini Canticum, H. 9 of Marc-Antoine Charpentier (better known to us for his somber Holy Week compositions) to the oratorio L'Enfance du Christ, H. 130 (Op. 25) of Hector Berlioz to the mystic organ meditations La Nativité du Seigneur, I/14 of Olivier Messiaen and his otherworldly Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, I/27. But we strongly recommend the underappreciated Une cantate de Noël, H. 212 of Arthur Honegger.
Honegger, French by birth and Swiss by nationality, began the cantata in 1940. The composition was put aside following the suicide of his librettist, the Swiss poet Cäsar von Arx. In 1953 with a commission from the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Honegger again took up the cantata and it premiered that December. It was his last composition.
Like many modern composers, Honegger appropriated the idea of a musical form but not its praxis. His cantata uses a mix of sacred and traditional airs and their several languages. The cantata begins with a plaintive De profundis clamavi (Psalm 129 (130), a pro defunctis text, against type here). At the extremity of O viens Emmanuel!, the mixed chorus (SATB) gives way to a sudden and disarming sweetness of the children's chorus, which delivers the joyous Christmas message.
The middle section of Une Cantate de Noel is in the form of a quodlibet, with five different Christmas carols being freely quoted. The effect is unusual, though, for the carols are sung simultaneously, with phrases or even single words being passed from voice to voice within the chorus. At one point carols in both duple and triple meters are being sung simultaneously. Honegger was a great admirer of the polyphonic style of Bach and this section represents polyphony in a thoroughly 20th-century idiom. The carols are each sung in their own language — Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen, Stille Nacht and O du fröhliche in German, Il est né in French and From Heaven on High in English. This not only serves to clarify the music but also represents the universality of the Christmas experience for Honegger.
The cantata, again against type, ends in a dark foregleaming of the passion of the Christ. Having lived through World War II, Honegger could not believe joy an enduring fixture in the world of men.
We wish our readers and correspondents, those who blast and those who bless, skimmers and accidental guests, Pave wishes all Joyeux Noël.
PFFT (What is this?): Joyeux Noël 5 | Rayonnement français 0
Il est ne, le divine enfant...rejoice! Joyeux Noël from Arizona, and God Bless!
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and a piece of bûche de Noël that was as wonderful as the piece I enjoyed. I also hope that your “yule log” burned all night :)
