Advent Music

[Pulcinella]

With the Christmas Music thread being recently resurrected, I thought it worthwhile having a more seasonal Advent thread (we usually mention the Advent Sunday service, and the occasional Compline, but not much else).

Which is your favourite JSB Advent cantata?
Which settings of the Great O Antiphons can you recommend?
What else do you dig out to play/listen to in Advent?

[mopsus]

Every year on Advent Sunday or very soon afterwards I play my recording of BWV36, BWV61 and BWV62 by Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi HMC901605). As for O Antiphons, at my church we do one of the settings written for Merton College: Rihards Dubra's O Radix Jesse.

[Pulcinella]

I have the same combination on a single CD, but it's the JEG/Monteverdi Choir/English Baroque Soloists recording.

I'd like to put in a plug (probably too late now for any inclusion in a service this year) for my friend David McGregor's O oriens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh_DPmUWuWo

[hmvman]

There's a very fine performance of BWV 62 on the All of Bach site. I shall probably watch/listen to it a couple of times at least.

https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-62

[vinteuil]

There's a very fine performance of BWV 62 on the All of Bach site. I shall probably watch/listen to it a couple of times at least.

https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-62

... very many thanks indeed for that : it has provided twenty minutes of joy in an otherwise rather unsatisfactory day

[hmvman]

... very many thanks indeed for that : it has provided twenty minutes of joy in an otherwise rather unsatisfactory day

You are very welcome!

[oddoneout]

There's a very fine performance of BWV 62 on the All of Bach site. I shall probably watch/listen to it a couple of times at least.

https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en/bwv/bwv-62

One for Padraig - it has his favourite bass player in the orchestra!

[mopsus]

The Herreweghe recording has really imprinted itself on me. We also have the complete Ton Koopman cantata set; every so often I hear Koopman's version of one of these cantatas, which uses plucked string instruments unlike Herreweghe, and it gives me a start!

[Nick Armstrong]

What else do you dig out to play/listen to in Advent?

I try to give the Respighi Trittico botticelliano a listen during Advent, due to the magical use of O come, O come Emmanuel (my favourite Advent music) in the second movement

[hmvman]

I try to give the Respighi Trittico botticelliano a listen during Advent, due to the magical use of O come, O come Emmanuel (my favourite Advent music) in the second movement

[Keraulophone]

I like to play the Bach-Busoni Nun Komm on the piano. The original organ version always makes a welcome appearance in the cathedral’s Advent service. Gabriel Jackson wrote a set of O Antiphons for Truro which are on one of our CDs and are still sung, though not at every Advent.

[Pulcinella]

I try to give the Respighi Trittico botticelliano a listen during Advent, due to the magical use of O come, O come Emmanuel (my favourite Advent music) in the second movement

You have reminded me of James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, which I must add to the listening list.

[Pulcinella]

I like to play the Bach-Busoni Nun Komm on the piano. The original organ version always makes a welcome appearance in the cathedral’s Advent service. Gabriel Jackson wrote a set of O Antiphons for Truro which are on one of our CDs and are still sung, though not at every Advent.

Merton commissioned a set of O Antiphons, including one by Gabriel Jackson, which are on this CD.

https://www.delphianrecords.com/products/dcd34122?variant=31296362905686

(The Presto site attributes them all to Howard Skempton!)

[mopsus]

I try to give the Respighi Trittico botticelliano a listen during Advent, due to the magical use of O come, O come Emmanuel (my favourite Advent music) in the second movement

The Wikipedia page on this hymn (which I assume to be accurate) is very informative: the tune (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Come,_O_Come,_Emmanuel#The_%22Veni_Emmanuel%22_t une) was first published by Thomas Helmore without a precise provenance, then taken up by Hymns Ancient and Modern. In the 1960s, by which time its use was widespread (not only in the English-speaking world, since Respighi knew of it), the plainchant authority Mary Berry discovered another MS containing the tune, proving its antiquity. It does not appear to have been matched to the Veni Emmanuel words before Helmore.

This shows a) that Hymns A&M was a very effective conduit for spreading a tune-hymn pairing across Christendom and b) we (all right, I) may be too ready to suspect that an 'old tune' without a well-attested origin is a pastiche composed by the person who first published it.

(For the record, the tune is also alluded to in Elizabeth Poston's Te Deum which I recorded a couple of years ago.)