Tomorrow is the beginning of Ordinary Time for Catholics. It's a little weird for the new season to start on a Tuesday, but that's how it goes when Christmas falls on a Sunday. This means today is the last day on which it makes much sense to talk about a Christmas carol, and so I am going to squeeze in some Christmas carol thoughts.
The nutshell version of the post is this: if you have any influence over which Christmas music will be performed live at a venue near you, be VERY CAREFUL about selecting What Child Is This. It is a pain to sing solo, because the phrases go on a leetle too long. But it is a MINEFIELD to sing with others. CAUTION NEEDED; hazards await.
By my count there are six different spots in What Child Is This? where the interval between two notes changes from version to version. Some sheet music will have half-steps in some of the spots; some will have whole steps in some of the spots. All of these divergences happen on sixteenth notes, which means that the dissonance between the half-step singers and the whole-step singers will be brief, but it also means it's very very hard to correct reliably. Here, I will play you a little sample to show you what I mean:
Yesterday I had agreed to substitute for the usual cantor at the early Mass. When I got there at 7am, there were two junior high girls who were planning to sing as well. Normally it's a more-the-merrier vibe, but normally we don't sing What Child Is This. I asked the accompanist to help us practice the tricky whole steps, but you guys, it's just really hard to sing the right notes in the right spots, especially as you wade into the verses where you to think about the lyrics as well as the intervals. I decided I would just fade out for the sketchy whole-step bits and let the girls sing what sounded right to them, but I didn't realize that this would mean a livestreamed clash between their voices and the keyboard. Was that better or worse than throwing my at-least-intermittently accurate vocal in the mix? Who can say?
The version that lives in my head is all half-steps, all the way through, all six times. I do not have a single sheet-music version that does it this way, but that's the version in my head regardless. So here on the very last day of the Christmas season, for those of you who are not too weary of Christmas music, I have recorded the Jamie Gladly All Half-Steps version.
What child is this, ALL HALF-STEPS ALL THE TIME
And remember for next year: if you're picking Christmas music to be performed live somewhere, go with Hark the Herald Angels Sing over What Child Is This.
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