The Lord of Misrule - original
"A minuit fut fait un reveil" - Chedeville (17th century French)
The Wexford Carol/The First of Winter - trad. Irish
This album, and accompanying show, represents a cornucopia of the musical genres, styles, and historical interests that the Crickets bring to the festal table. From the Parisian Baroque scene to 1950s popular radio, and everything Celtic folk between, we invite you to fill a cup with wassail and join our rambling party through the villages of England, France, Ireland, Germany, and America as we explore the tunes of Yuletide, giving all a signature chivalrous twist, and celebrating the traditions of this ancient holiday from the peaceful first of winter to the raucous Twelfth Night of Christmas.
This disc is anchored around six tunes by French composer Esprit Philippe Chedeville who championed the musette, a French bagpipe dating to the late 16th century. Musettes were celebrated and played by the French aristocracy in the 18th century as a window into the more charming rooms of peasant life, a welcome escape to a quaint past during the less charming days of civil strife along the way to impending revolution. These dances come from Esprit Phillipe’s "Nouveau recueil de Noëls", a collection of popular Christmas melodies heard in the parlor rooms of Paris, 1730 which he arranged for any two treble instruments, be they musettes, vielles, flutes, or oboes. We gleefully exploit the folk origins of his arrangements in our arrangements for Scottish small pipes, Irish whistle, fiddle, banjo, Baroque guitar, bass, and drums. No doubt Esprit Philippe took inspiration from Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s "Noëls sur les instruments", published a generation earlier. For our arrangements, we included Charpentier’s four part setting of "Or nous dites, Marie" as well as his bass lines for "Joseph est bien marié" and "Ou s’en vont ces guays bergers". Joining Chedeville's tunes is (also from a generation earlier) Gabriel Bataille’s drinking-song- in-disguise-as-a-lute-song, "Qui veut chasser une migraine". From neighboring Germany, "Lo How a Rose E're Blooming" has been stunningly interpreted by many ensembles before us, but we couldn't resist it, so we arranged a variation for banjo and tenor whistle.
Leaving the continent, we skip across the channel to the green isles and the new world beyond…
From Olde England we share a wassail from the village of Malpas, a handful of caroler's favorites in a merry medley interrupted mid-way by a German Medieval tune that the English co-opted centuries later (they did this a lot), and the beloved “Holly and the Ivy”, full of pagan-Christian symbolism about the crown of thorns and the Virgin Mary. From Ireland - the mystical Wexford carol and a lovely tune we discovered purely because it had the name winter in the title, but which proved itself as delicate and delightful as the year's first falling snow.
Our American numbers include the traditional spiritual “Bright Morning Stars”, a reworking of the angelic "A Christmas Carol", a choral piece by the usually discordant composer Charles Ives, a "different" (to quote the licensing agent of the Elvis Presley estate) and toe-tapping "Blue Christmas", and a number of originals. “Rise Up Shepherd” uses a text borrowed from the gospel tradition, set to a new melody influenced by the Appalachian. “Cold, Cold December” is our literary as well as musical composition, playing off of textual themes from the lyrics of “Winter Nights”, the evocative poetry of which was written by 16th-century lutenist Thomas Campion, but reset here to an original melody.
The theme of fending off the dread of long winter dark by turning inward to the comforts of friendship, firelight, and alcohol is advice found throughout the disc, from the opening lines of the poem "Drive the Cold Winter Away", to “Qui Veut Chasser…”,(which has otherwise nothing to specify it as a Christmas piece), to "The Lord of Misrule", a song about the party to rule them all. Stretching back to its origins in the Roman Saturnalia, and still celebrated as the main
Christmastide festival of Epiphany in some nations, Twelfth Night enjoyed its zenith in King Henry VIII's England as a raucous affair in which servant and master switched roles, everyone dressed in costume and greenery, a huge feast
crowned by the famous boar's head was enjoyed, and a Lord of Misrule was elected to lead everyone in activities of "harmful delight".
This disc is anchored around six tunes by French composer Esprit Philippe Chedeville who championed the musette, a French bagpipe dating to the late 16th century. Musettes were celebrated and played by the French aristocracy in the 18th century as a window into the more charming rooms of peasant life, a welcome escape to a quaint past during the less charming days of civil strife along the way to impending revolution. These dances come from Esprit Phillipe’s "Nouveau recueil de Noëls", a collection of popular Christmas melodies heard in the parlor rooms of Paris, 1730 which he arranged for any two treble instruments, be they musettes, vielles, flutes, or oboes. We gleefully exploit the folk origins of his arrangements in our arrangements for Scottish small pipes, Irish whistle, fiddle, banjo, Baroque guitar, bass, and drums. No doubt Esprit Philippe took inspiration from Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s "Noëls sur les instruments", published a generation earlier. For our arrangements, we included Charpentier’s four part setting of "Or nous dites, Marie" as well as his bass lines for "Joseph est bien marié" and "Ou s’en vont ces guays bergers". Joining Chedeville's tunes is (also from a generation earlier) Gabriel Bataille’s drinking-song- in-disguise-as-a-lute-song, "Qui veut chasser une migraine". From neighboring Germany, "Lo How a Rose E're Blooming" has been stunningly interpreted by many ensembles before us, but we couldn't resist it, so we arranged a variation for banjo and tenor whistle.
Leaving the continent, we skip across the channel to the green isles and the new world beyond…
From Olde England we share a wassail from the village of Malpas, a handful of caroler's favorites in a merry medley interrupted mid-way by a German Medieval tune that the English co-opted centuries later (they did this a lot), and the beloved “Holly and the Ivy”, full of pagan-Christian symbolism about the crown of thorns and the Virgin Mary. From Ireland - the mystical Wexford carol and a lovely tune we discovered purely because it had the name winter in the title, but which proved itself as delicate and delightful as the year's first falling snow.
Our American numbers include the traditional spiritual “Bright Morning Stars”, a reworking of the angelic "A Christmas Carol", a choral piece by the usually discordant composer Charles Ives, a "different" (to quote the licensing agent of the Elvis Presley estate) and toe-tapping "Blue Christmas", and a number of originals. “Rise Up Shepherd” uses a text borrowed from the gospel tradition, set to a new melody influenced by the Appalachian. “Cold, Cold December” is our literary as well as musical composition, playing off of textual themes from the lyrics of “Winter Nights”, the evocative poetry of which was written by 16th-century lutenist Thomas Campion, but reset here to an original melody.
The theme of fending off the dread of long winter dark by turning inward to the comforts of friendship, firelight, and alcohol is advice found throughout the disc, from the opening lines of the poem "Drive the Cold Winter Away", to “Qui Veut Chasser…”,(which has otherwise nothing to specify it as a Christmas piece), to "The Lord of Misrule", a song about the party to rule them all. Stretching back to its origins in the Roman Saturnalia, and still celebrated as the main
Christmastide festival of Epiphany in some nations, Twelfth Night enjoyed its zenith in King Henry VIII's England as a raucous affair in which servant and master switched roles, everyone dressed in costume and greenery, a huge feast
crowned by the famous boar's head was enjoyed, and a Lord of Misrule was elected to lead everyone in activities of "harmful delight".
| a_chivalrous_christmas_lyrics.pdf |