The Music of Christmas
Posted on Dec 16, 2009
The music of the Christmas season is a mixture of carols, songs, hymns and classical instrumentals. As a whole, the music uniquely identifies this season, making it instantaneously recognizable. Many of the carols are associated with fascinating stories, which to me make the songs even more captivating. This is the case for one carol whose background links 19th century France, friends from different religious traditions, Civil War America, the trenches of the Franco-Prussian War and the foundations of modern radio!
The French carol “Cantique de Noel” was written as a poem by commissionaire of wines Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure at the request of his parish priest. The author completed the poem during a coach ride to Paris in December 1847. When he had finished the writing, he turned to his Jewish friend, Adolphe Charles Adams, to set the words to music. The beautiful song was sung for Christmas, less than three weeks later. Banned by the organized French church because it lacked “musical taste,” the song grew in popularity, was translated into English and then became a favorite in the northern states during the American Civil War. This oceanic leap seems to have largely been the result of significant “editorial stretching” by John Sullivan Dwight who translated Placide Cappeau’s French to read, “Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother.” Those sentiments resonated with anti-slavery supporters. A legend, which may have been born more from the carol’s the theme of peace and love than of reality, holds that during the Franco-Prussian War all fighting ceased for twenty-four hours after a French soldier entered “no man’s land” and sang the opening line of the carol, only to be joined by an opposing soldier who completed the verse in German. Finally, Dr. Reginald Fessenden, once an electrical engineer and chief chemist for Thomas A. Edison, powered up his revolutionary invention, the alternator-single frequency transmitter, on Christmas Eve 1906. The inventor used the occasion for a radio broadcast of the Christmas story in his own voice, which he concluded by playing “Cantique de Noel” on his violin.
In English, we call this carol “O Holy Night” and it is now a favorite around the world. Christmas music is a celebration of the miraculous things God does; however, the stories behind our seasonal music are laced with the important reminder that ordinary people accomplish remarkable things. You might say there is a message “between the lines.” In the coming days, may your time with family and friends both old and new, be fulfilling, invigorating and spiritually refreshing.
