About the Book
Everyone loves a Christmas carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic.
But how did they get that magic? In Christmas Carols Andrew Gant tells the story of some twenty carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unravelling a captivating - and often surprising - tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys, choirboys, monks and drunks. We delve into the history of such favourites as 'Good King Wenceslas', 'Away in a Manger' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', discovering along the way how 'Hark, the Herald angels sing' came to replace 'Hark, how all the welkin ring' and how Ralph Vaughan Williams bolted the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth-century American pilgrim to make 'O little town of Bethlehem'.
Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions. (Goodreads)
My ThoughtsWow this book is way more in depth than I anticipated! I really like this book and how it really goes into the history of carols. We sing songs that were sung hundreds of years ago and it's really quite interesting. Some of my favorites are Good King Wenceslas, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, and I Saw Three Ships.
This would be a great book to read leading up to the holidays, which is how it is set up in the book.
Highly recommend!
" I received this book from BookLook Bloggers for free in exchange for an honest review."
1 comment:
This sounds like a book I would enjoy. I really enjoy anything related to Christmas!
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