What sweeter music can we bring
ALS ICH BEI MEINEN SCHAFEN WACHT
Rutter Tune
I. Origins
This carol by poet-priest Robert Herrick (1591–1674) was first published in His Noble Numbers: or, His Pious Pieces (1647) with six stanzas and three sections labeled as choruses. Herrick served a parish in Dean Prior, Devonshire, for about twenty years before being forced into retirement on account of his loyalty to King Charles I, who was removed from power in 1642 and executed in 1649. The heading of the poem said it was “sung to the King in the presence at White-Hall,” so it had been composed at least five years prior to its publication.
Fig. 1. His Noble Numbers: or, His Pious Pieces (1647)
The poem was followed by a notice, “The musical part was composed by M. Henry Lawes.” Henry Lawes (1596–1662) and his brother William (1602–1645) were both notable composers in that time period. No copies of this score could be located for review, and it apparently does not survive or was never published.
II. Text: Analysis
The opening lines of the first chorus establish the context of the song as a celebration of the birth of Christ. The rhyme scheme is aaaaabb, with five straight rhymes of “-ing,” using a meter of 8.7.8.8.8.9.8, mostly iambic, except lines 2 and 7. The first stanza (rhymed aaa, 8.8.8) speaks of the darkness of the season, but says the brightness of the occasion is like the month of May. The second stanza (abb, 8.8.8) asks why the season feels like spring. The third (aaa, 8.8.8.5) continues the questioning but breaks the poetic structure, with the last line carrying over into the fourth stanza (bbccc, 3.8.8.8.8). The fourth stanza answers the questions: “Tis he is born, whose quickening birth give life and luster,” etc. The next triple rhyme is labeled as a chorus (aaa, 8.8.8), but it continues the theme of what came before it. The next quatrain, labeled as 1, interrupted by 2, speaks of the child’s coming to the earth, and says the best room for him is in the heart. In that time period, the combination “come” and “roome” were probably close in pronunciation, making it more like a true rhyme than an eye rhyme. This stanza ends with an incomplete thought, continued and ended in the last quatrain (aabb, 8.8.8.8), labeled as another chorus.
The irregularities of the textual structure would be difficult to set to music in a strophic manner. In its original form, it definitely would not work as a strophic hymn.
III. Dissemination and Reprinting
The carol seems to have been largely forgotten until the second half of the nineteenth century. One writer in 1863 remarked, “Some twenty or thirty years ago, we should scarcely have dared to predict the resuscitation of the Christmas carol,” speaking not so much about this one in particular but about the genre in general, which “had become little better than a respectable scheme for raising money.”[1]
Herrick’s carol had appeared in an article in The Illustrated London News in 1845, with the author confiding, “If ever a man felt our old English feelings warmly, and expressed them beautifully, it is Herrick, the jolly parson of the times of the civil wars . . . while he sung the merriments of Christmas-tide, with as much unction as the flowers and fragrance of May.”[2] It was included in Christmas with the Poets (1851), A Garland of Christmas Carols (1861), The Roxburghe Ballads (1871), Christmas Carols and Ballads (1874), Christmas in Song and Story (1876), and many other collections, reproducing the original text, but never set to music.
IV. Adaptation
A turning point for the carol came with its inclusion in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928), where it had been altered and condensed by Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) and set to the German carol tune “Als ich bei meinen Schafen wacht,” arranged by Martin Shaw (1875–1958).
Fig. 2. Oxford Book of Carols (1928).
Dearmer’s revision reset the text into four quatrains of 8s, plus a refrain of three lines of 8, except the second line of the first stanza, which is the only line of 7. Most of the text is from Herrick’s original work, but line 2.4 is Dearmer’s.
The tune is better known through an English translation by Theodore Baker, “While by my sheep I watched at night,” published as an anthem by Schirmer in 1895, arranged by Hugo Jüngst. The original German carol is probably the work of Friedrich Spee (1591–1635), first printed in the appendix to Alte Catholische Geistliche Kyrchengesäng (Cologne: Quentel, 1621).[3,4] A more suitable tune for Herrick’s carol, from the realm of English hymnody, would be ATTWOOD by Thomas Attwood (1767–1838).
V. Musical Revitalization
Dearmer’s combination of text and tune has not been adopted into any hymnals, nor was his adaptation included in the New Oxford Book of Carols (1992). Dearmer’s text, and the carol in general, found new life via a musical setting by English choral composer John Rutter, performed for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1987, published as an anthem by Oxford University Press in 1988, and first recorded by the Cambridge Singers, conducted by Rutter, on Christmas with the Cambridge Singers (1989).
by CHRIS FENNER
with JOSEPH HERL
for Hymnology Archive
28 December 2022
Footnotes:
“Christmas Carols,” Once a Week, vol. 10, no. 1 (26 Dec. 1863), p. 10: Google Books
“A Gossip of Christmas,” The London Illustrated News (27 Dec. 1845): Google Books
Irmgard Scheitler, “Lied und katholische Katechese im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, vol. 49 (2010), pp. 163–185: JSTOR
Alte Catholische Geistliche Kyrchengesäng (Cologne: Quentel, 1621): Google Books
Related Resources:
J.R. Watson, “What sweeter music can we bring,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH