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SCENES & MUSICAL NUMBERS
PROLOGUE
“Apple Tree Wassail” – Orchestra
Scene 1—A London street
“Patapan” – Company
STAVE ONE: MARLEY’S GHOST—Christmas Eve, 1843.
Scene 1—Scrooge’s counting house
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman” – Turkey Boys, Fred
Scene 2—The street; later, Scrooge’s chambers
STAVE TWO: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
Scene 1—Scrooge’s bedchamber
“Dream Within a Dream” - The Ghost of Christmas Past
Scene 2—A country road
“Ding Dong Merrily on High” - Villagers
Scene 3—A schoolyard
Scene 4—The Fezziwig’s warehouse
“Here We Come A-Wassailing” - Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, Young Scrooge,
Belle, Dick Wilkins and ensemble.
Scene 5—London Street
STAVE THREE: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
Scene 1—Scrooge’s bedchamber
“Boars Head Carol” - The Ghost of Christmas Present and Company
“Patapan”(Reprise) – Company
“The Gloucestershire Wassail” - The Ghost of Christmas Present and Company
THE INTERVAL
Ent’ racte
“In Praise of Christmas” - Ensemble
Scene 2—The Cratchit home
“I Saw Three Ships” - Tiny Tim and Mr. Cratchit
“We Wish You A Merry Christmas” - The Cratchits
Scene 3—Fred’s home
“Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” - Fred, Meg and Guests
Scene 4—A wasteland
STAVE FOUR: THE LAST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
Scene 1—Scrooge’s bedchamber; later, a tavern
“Isn’t It Grand Boys?” - Mrs. Dilber, Joe and Ensemble
Scene 2 – Scrooge’s counting house
“There Was A Pig Went Out To Dig” - Gentleman 1 and Gentleman 2
Scene 3—At the entrance to a church
Scene 4—The Cratchit home
“The Little Child” - Narrator
Scene 5—A churchyard
STAVE FIVE: CHRISTMAS DAY, 1843
Scene 1—Scrooge’s bedchamber; later, the street
“Past Three O’Clock” - Carolers
Scene 2—The street outside Scrooge’s chambers
“Simple Gifts” - Orchestra
Scene 3—Scrooge’s counting house
EPILOGUE
“We Wish You A Merry Christmas” - Full Company
About the Music
Throughout the play, instrumental arrangements original music and traditional carols underscore all scenic transitions, and several scenes with dialogue, much like a film’s sound track. Additionally, original music and thematic underscoring have been composed for certain scenes or specific characters.
Apple Tree Wassail. English traditional. Each year on Twelfth Night (January 5th, the Eve of Epiphany), the people of Somerset, Devon, Worcestershire, Sussex and Kent, the traditional cider-making areas of England, wassail their apple trees to ensure a fine crop of cider apples in the summer ahead. The Anglo-Saxons used the phrase Wæs hal! as an everyday greeting. Wæs is a form of the verb ‘to be.’ Hal is the ancestor of the modern English words whole and hale. Thus, ‘wæs hal’ literally meant ‘Be healthy!’. Since the Anglo-Saxons had a custom of welcoming guests by presenting them with a horn of ale (or cup of mead, or goblet of wine), the greeting evolved into a toast. The phrase was eventually contracted into one word, ‘wassail,’ and came to refer to the act of toasting to someone’s health, ‘wassailing,’ and to a type of alcoholic beverage (spiced ale or punch) used to toast people’s health on special occasions. The use of ‘wassailing’ to mean ‘caroling’ (as in “Here we go a-wassailing…”) is a rather different tradition and stems from the habit of singing songs while drinking from the ‘wassail-bowl’ during Christmas and New Year celebrations, for rewards of food, drink or money..
Patapan. Lyrics by La Monnoye. A traditional Burgundian carol, dating from the Renaissance.
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. West Country traditional. The text used here, now standard, is from William Sandys’ Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (1833), where it is associated with another tune, said to have been more usual in the West Country. The ‘London’ tune, used here, is also known as ‘Chestnut,’ from the title ‘Chestnut (or Doves Figary)’ in John Playford’s The English Dancing Master (1651). It is now ubiquitous in the form given in Bramley and Stainer’s Christmas Carols New and Old (1871).
The Coventry Shepherds’ Carol. This carol is from “The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors,” originally published in 1591, and refers to the Holy Innocents, whose feast day is December 28 (i.e., during the Twelve Days of Christmas), observed in commemoration of the slaughter of male infants in Bethlehem during Herod the Great’s attempt to kill the infant Jesus. Original tune.
El Desembre Congelat. Although specific origins are unknown, this carol comes from Europe sometime in the 16th to 18th centuries. The popular English translations of this title are The Cold December and Cold December’s Winds Were Stilled. The original text was in the language of Catalan, a language related to both French and Spanish, and influenced by Latin. In this production, we use variants on this melody for two scenes between Scrooge and Mrs. Dilber.
A Dream Within A Dream, The Lullaby of Christmas Past. Lyrics by Jon Kimbell and David James, after by a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. Music by James Woodland.
Here We Come A Wassailing. English traditional. The text is from Husk (Songs of the Nativity, 1864), whose sources included a Manchester chap-book and a broadside printed in Bradford, Yorkshire, c. 1860. He could find no older occurrence, and believed that the carol was a recent conflation of earlier texts by northern wassailers. The tune used here (The Oxford Book of Carols, 1928) was taught to Martin Shaw by his father, who had often heard it sung in the streets of Leeds in the 1850s.
The Boar’s Head Carol. English traditional. This carol is sung every Christmas at Queen’s College, Oxford. The Provost and Fellows enter after the usual trumpet call that announces dinner each evening during Full Term. The Provost having then said grace, the boar’s head is carried in by three chefs on its silver charger, surrounded by rosemary and gilded springs of bay, stuck with flags, and magnificently crowned. One either side are torch-bearers, and in front walks the solo singer and (proceeding backwards) the choir. The procession halts for each verse, moving forward during the refrains. When the charger is set down on the high table, the Provost distributes the herbs among the choristers and presents the solo singer with the orange from the boar’s mouth. An early version of the text is ‘A carol bringyng in the bores heed’ in Christmasse Carolles Newly Emprynted at London in the flete strete…by Wynkyn de Worde (1521) No early musical setting survives, and the tune to which it has been sung from at least the eighteenth century probably derives from a Restoration bass pattern. The version we use was printed in William Wallace Fyfe’s Christmas, its Customs and Carols (1863) and Husk’s Songs of the Nativity (1864), except for the refrain, for which we use the 1901 revision, the arrangement now sung at Queen’s College. Boar’s head feasts were particularly popular at Christmas – in Edward II’s time the open season for boar hunting ran from Christmas to Candlemas (Feb. 2). Wild boar have been extinct in England since the middle of the eighteenth century.
The Gloucestershire Wassail. English traditional. Verses 1-5 and tune are as in The Oxford Book of Carols (1928), mainly taken by Vaughan Williams from ‘an old person’ in Gloucestershire. Verses 6-8 were collected by Cecil Sharp in the same county. At the close of the eighteenth century, the Rev. John Brand recorded that Gloucestershire wassailers sang this carol carrying a large bowl decorated with ribbons and garlands (Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1853-5). White bread (verse 1) was a rich man’s delicacy. Cherry and Dobbin are horses; Broad May, Fillpail, and Colly are cattle. ‘Our master’ in verses 2 and 3 is the leader of the wassailers. ‘Christmas pie’ in verse 3 was a huge meat pie; Husk (Songs of the Nativity, 1864) gives an old recipe, which begins: ‘Take pheasant, hare, and chicken, or capon, of each, one; with two partridges, two pigeons, and two conies…’. Such pies were still common in Yorkshire in the mid-nineteenth century. Small beer (verse 7) was a watery second brew considered fit only for women, servants, and children.
Ding! Dong! Merrily on High. Thoinot Arbeau (1520-95). Although this may seem to be the most traditional of carols, it is anything but. The vigorous tune is a dance from the Orchésographie (1588, 1596) of Thoinot Arbeau (the alias of Jehan Tabourot, a French ecclesiastic who also published a work on astronomy and enjoyed anagrams). The tune is set in the Ionian mode (the modern major mode), which at that time still had associations with hedonism and uninhibited enjoyment. It was left to George Ratcliffe Woodward, an Englishman, and Charles Wood, an Ulsterman, to turn it into a carol. Woodward was one of the great forces for change in church music at the beginning of the twentieth century. An Anglican clergyman and a scholar, Woodward collaborated with the Cambridge musician, Wood, on several books of hymns and carols. Any good tune was grist for their mill as they combed the European past for material to supplement what seemed to them the limited supply of English folk carols. Their Cowley Carol Book (1901, 1919) had a powerful influence on The Oxford Book of Carols (1928).
Past Three O’Clock. Traditional. Woodward and Wood (see above) published this ripe but well-loved piece of ‘Olde Englishry’ in The Cambridge Carol Book (1924), on which they collaborated. Although it looks like a romantic concoction, it has a genuine connection with the music of the London waits, who in the Middle Ages were employed to patrol the town each night, keeping watch and sounding the hours. The call of the London waits was printed as a simple tune by John Playford in The English Dancing Master (3rd ed., 1665), and it was adapted by William Chappell in his Popular Music of the Olden Time (1853-9). Chappell added new harmonies and supplied the (authentic) words to the first section of the call (bars 1-8). What Woodward and Wood did was to take the London call from Chappell, reharmonize it, and set words to the second section (bars 9-16).
I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In. English traditional. The text and melody used here, from Sandys’ Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (1833), is one of many variants, of which the earliest is in Forbes’ Cantus (1666 edition). They all derive from the Mediterranean odyssey of the supposed relics of the three magi, the ‘Three Kings of Cologne,’ the splendor of whose final voyage has remained vivid in European folk memory. The Empress Helena (who was born in York), mother of Constantine the Great and discoverer of the True Cross, carried them to Constantinople in the fourth century, from where they were later taken by St. Eustathius to Milan. In 1162, the skulls were gifted to the Cologne Cathedral by Frederic Barbarossa, and Bishop Renaldus brought them there, to rest in the jeweled caskets in which they remain to this day. Sandys noted that the melody is very similar to one of the old Shakespeare tunes, “There lived a man in Babylon,” sung by Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night.”
We Wish You A Merry Christmas. English traditional. The remnant of a closure much used by wassailers and other luck visitors, still in common use by modern doorstep carolers.
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day. Lyrics revised by Jon Kimbell. English traditional, from William Sandys’ Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (1833). This is one of the many carols traditionally sung at Christmas that trace the whole life of Christ. The melody which Sandys gives has close relatives in Dorset and Wales. The text has not been found in any other source, but it seems possible that “Tomorrow shall be…” was devised to be sung and danced at the conclusion of the first day of a Cornish late medieval three-day passion-play, which may itself have made use of the ‘lover’ and ‘beloved’ theme. The actor portraying Christ would have sung the verses and the whole company and audience the repeats of the refrains. The song would naturally have become familiar through repeated local use, and may even have been sung at Christmas: carols of the Passion were not unknown in the Christmas season. The increased popularity of ‘Redemption’ carols, following the eighteenth-century rise of the Methodist and Evangelical movements, would in any case have made it a natural choice for domestic carolers and village waits, by which time it would have lost the initial refrain and its origins with the passion play would have been forgotten. There are settings of the text by Gustav Holst and by Igor Stravinsky (in his Cantata, 1952).
Isn’t it Grand, Boys? An old Irish drinking ditty.
There Was A Pig Went Out To Dig. An old agrarian mummers’ carol from Bedfordshire, linking the Christmas season with the cycle of planting and harvest. At one time, this carol was mimed by men of the village. It is one of many carols and legends concerning the importance of animals at Christmastime.
The Little Child. Lyrics by Jon Kimbell. Inspired by a traditional Austrian lullaby, Still, Still, Still.
In the Bleak Mid-Winter. Christina Rossetti did not intend this fine poem as a hymn or carol. The free rhythm does not easily lend itself to a single-verse setting, but the problem is effortlessly solved in Harold Darke’s through-composed setting. Darke was organist of the Church of St. Michael, Cornhill (in the City of London), from 1916 to 1966. His setting dates from 1911. There is another setting by Gustav Holst.
Begone Dull Care. English Traditional. 1890. Richard Loveridge.
Simple Gifts. The melody is that of the well-known Shaker hymn.
In Praise of Christmas. English traditional. The lyrics are by Thomas D’Urfey (1653-1723), dramatist, stutterer, and friend of King Charles II. One of the most prolific and popular poets and musicians of his age, famous for his comic skills, he was popular for songs such as ‘Blowzabella, My Bouncing Doxie’ and ‘The Fart; Famous for its Satyrical Humour in the Reign of Queen Anne,’ but Henry Purcell wrote incidental music to accompany D’Urfey’s play “The Comedy of Don Quixote.” His own musical reputation was one of carelessness. D’Urfey did not deny it, but stated that the “irregularities disappear when [my] songs are sung.” Well aware that his music was looked down upon, he dismissed his critics with the comment, “The town may da-da-damn me for a poet, but they si-si-sing my songs for all that.”
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