“Silent Night” turns 200

Post by tenaciousDaniel » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

DanAndersen wrote: post #27

cvwright wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice choices! IMO the best Christmas songs have a mix of joy and something.. else. Something a little eerie. Not quite foreboding , exactly, but definitely a bit tense. From a certain perspective, maybe this is theologically correct to have a mix of "Yay Jesus is coming!" and also at the same time "Oh shit, he's coming here?!? " For those from other faith traditions, imagine you hear that your CEO is finally going to…

Agreed! My favorite Christmas carols are the ones that aren't just marking a jolly merry festival, but have that "foreboding" melancholy potency you describe. I think G. K. Chesteron did a good job of capturing the sense of it, in his "The Everlasting Man" [0]: >Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense…

Post by labster » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 4:57 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #25

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #3

> Is it the greatest Christmas song ever? I’m a church organist inter alia and I doubt any of my fellows would say it was. O Come All Ye Faithful? Certainly. Hark the Herald? Could be. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with that spine-tingling David Willcocks last verse? Perhaps. But sweet, saccharine Silent Night? It wouldn’t be on the list.

This is funny for me. I'm a singer and organist who has spent my life in churches and I am notorious among all my friends and family for loathing Silent Night (in good fun). It is slow, harmonically uninteresting, but worst of all it is always sung unaccompanied on Christmas Eve, in which time it get slower and flatter until it is at risk of coming to a complete stop. Give me O Come All Ye Faithful or One in Royal Da…

Post by bitwize » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 5:18 AM UTC

nicklaf wrote: post #26

sparky_z wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Holy Night, when done very well. But it suffers more than most when the performance is just mediocre.

But it suffers more than most when the performance is just mediocre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiTX_jfUI5Y

Post by bitwize » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

petecox wrote: post #28

fipple wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that most people who don’t like Silent Night never got to have a truly silent winter night... which of course requires active snowfall with no wind.

Those of us in the Southern Hemisphere never really got the sleighride thing. Not when it's 40ºC.

Post by _4gzn » Sat, Dec 15, 2018, 7:13 AM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #3

> Is it the greatest Christmas song ever? I’m a church organist inter alia and I doubt any of my fellows would say it was. O Come All Ye Faithful? Certainly. Hark the Herald? Could be. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with that spine-tingling David Willcocks last verse? Perhaps. But sweet, saccharine Silent Night? It wouldn’t be on the list.