What Sweeter Music...

There is no more perfect marriage of music and word than John Rutter's "What Sweeter Music." Driving to or from school, I pop the "Cambridge Singers' Christmas Companion" in the cd-player, and it ends up being the song playing when I get where I'm going. I have to stop and wait and listen for it to finish. It is divine.

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day
That sees December turned to May.
Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly shorn
Thus on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis he is born. whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre, public mirth,
To heaven and the under-earth.
We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him, to welcome him.
The nobler part of all the house here, is the heart.
Which we will give him: and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath.
To do him honour. who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

-- Robert Herrick

The wonderful busy season is upon us. My classes are over - the first semester is in bed and just waiting to be tucked in (slowly, excruciatingly, over the next two weeks) with finals. It is time for study, and time for concerts... lots and lots of concerts. Two are next Thursday (yes, night before the Property Final... guess I won't be cramming that evening)... the High School Orchestra concert, and the second-grade holiday program (they do a great Rudolph). Then the following Tuesday the LHS Choir concert (if you're not doing anything that evening, I highly recommend the Chamber Singers; besides being the mom of a bass - as in singer, not fish - I can say in all honesty they are mind-blowingly fantastic... 7 pm in the LHS auditorium), and the Thursday after that the middle school choir concert (which, therefore, is how I shall be celebrating the completion of the first 1/6th of my law-school career).

Comments

cublawg said…
That was my high school English teacher's way of teaching us about metaphor. Gotta love "private" school...
06 December, 2005 14:42
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