Don't Rest Ye Just Yet

.....This year, 2011, is the 350th anniversary of a book. 1661 saw the publication of "New Carolls For This Merry Time Of Christmas-- To sundry pleasant tunes. With new additions never before printed, to be sung to the delight of the hearers." A recent search for a public domain online copy found nothing at Project Gutenberg and restricted access to copies at Hong Kong University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. There is purportedly a microform copy in the National Library of Australia at Canberra, assuming that Canberra is not in that part of Australia currently under water at the moment.

.....The book followed closely after the Restoration of 1660, which lifted prohibitions against Christmas carols. Carols had their origins not as songs but as pagan dances that accompanied the change of seasons or fertility rites. The rhythms of the dances then became the basis for songs. Although early Christian leaders condemned the practice of carol singing, later attempts to convert pagan adherents to their faith included the practice (in Europe at least) of trying to convince the pagans that the trappings of their culture actually had Christian origins. This is why pine trees, holly and other decidedly non-Middle Eastern accoutrements have become associated with the birth of Jesus. But while the ruse succeeded in bringing on converts, church authorities continued to object to the assimilation of pagan practices. Christians, however, did not. Although not integrated into church ceremony, many pagan rituals and even day-to-day customs became a part of domestic life in Christian homes long after their true origins were forgotten. (Forget Christmas; Easter has become so saturated in pagan fertility symbols it should have an 'R' rating.) Bans against singing carols were alternately enforced and liberalized until the Restoration, after which only Puritans and various zealots continued to rail against them, to decreasing effect. Still, so soon after official reprieve the printer of "New Carolls..." identified themselves only by initials: "printed by H.B. for Andrew Kemb, and are to be sold at his shop near Saint Margarets Hill in Southwark". Why take chances?

.....New printings of the book appeared in 1670, 1681 and 1725. There was a relative flurry of new books collecting old carols in the 1800's, but in the intervening time many of the old favorites were kept alive by oral tradition with its inevitable tendency toward reinvention. The best single source for disambiguation of these variant versions I have found is "The Penguin Book Of Carols" edited by Ian Bradley(1999).[Bradley himself recommends the revised "New Oxford Book OF Carols" (1992) in his introduction.] I found the Penguin collection while trying to pin down the song-writing credits of Christmas carols in my rock music collection. Countless pop music performers have recorded Christmas music, some recording entire albums. Unfortunately, most of those albums have a token original number and are then fleshed out with 'the usual suspects'-- pre-1900 standards whose authorship, while established, is often ignored owing to their public domain status. No one will sue over zero royalties, so why bother to identify them? At some point I began putting together cassettes of as many holiday songs as I could to provide a counterpoint to the homogenized mall-music versions and faced the same predicament as anyone who makes this same innocent mistake: "Good Lord, how many versions of 'Silent Night' are there?" I resolved to limit myself to acquiring only those songs that debuted as recordings, ensuring that there at least could be an arguably definitive version. Then, realizing that with new songs being written every year that I would never live to see the end of this project, I chose the arbitrary cut-off point of the year 2000 for my search. That gives me roughly a century since the invention of the Edison cylinder in which to explore. I made that decision twenty years ago and have not come close to tracking down all the recordings I want. It's enough of a struggle just to organize what I've found. If you care to join me here, that's just what I intend to do.

.....This blog is the latest in a series of the Layman's Guide to Criticism, whose Mission Statement and other blogs are to be found on the list of links to the left. Tomorrow I will detail the tag categories that will be used here.