MY #1 CHRISTMAS CAROL
My favourite Christmas carol is O Holy Night. Where Calling and Not Calling My Ex (which I wrote about a couple of days ago) is a triumph of lyricism, O Holy Night is as pure and sublime as melody-writing gets. Actually, I’m sort of prone to insisting to anyone who will listen, which is not many people, that it is greatest melody ever written; a melody that makes McCartney seem repetitive and Prokofiev look meandering. It rises and rises and just when you’re recovering from the first bristling down your spine - usually round about Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! -you’re hit with one goosebump-inducing chord change after another, eventually culminating in that pristine, saintly, luminous top note.
I’ve read in a few places some towns flip the switch on their Christmas lights when the soloist hits that note. I’m glad not to live in such a town as I don’t think my constitution could handle this. My eyes prickle just thinking about it.
There are many versions of this song. Perhaps because the melody itself is crafted so majestically, none that I’ve found have totally hit the spot for me. Unfortunately the inherent drama of the melody means that most singers are incapable of handling it without melismatic fuckery and as such there are scores of histrionic, sexed-up treatments littering the internet. In my mind, though, exists a Platonic ideal of this song with a sweet, unfettered beginning and a choir of angels in the end, a version that commences life in the gutter and ascends to the stars. I don’t know who sings it. Roy Orbison maybe.
This Sufjan one is probably my favourite of the versions on Youtube. It has its drawbacks - the instrumental is a little too hokey even for my deeply sentimental tastes - but the simplicity of the vocal, the warmth of the second verse, those warm thick harmonies, the moment the drums kick in, the way it draws back at the end - win me over.
This one is good too; you can’t beat choirboys for those beautiful unembellished notes. But you know what, I’m not convinced they nail the top note. I’m not blaming them! It’s a tough song! I’m just saying, it’s hard to know how to giftwrap perfection.
Happy Christmas.
CAROLINE J. DALE
(falling on her knees; hearing angel voices)
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