Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published Dec. 18, 2002

Christmas without music?
I can't imagine

Can you imagine what the Christmas season would be without music? We hear the long-familiar carols and more modern Christmas songs for the few weeks leading up to Dec. 25 and then they are packed away for another year. Most of us enjoy that time but there are some Scrooge-like characters who deride even that short time of special music.

Those studying the history of customs tell us that carols began as dances accompanied by singing but they had no religious meaning. It was long-ago Italian friars who added the gospel story. There is a German legend that ties the Black Plague of the 1300s to Christmas carols. This killer disease claimed thousands of lives across Europe and brought terror everywhere. Citizens believed their only defense was to hide in their houses with the doors barred.

The legend says that one Christmas Eve in 1353 in the town of Goldberg, Germany one brave soul came out of hiding. He walked the deserted streets and sang out loud and clear an old Christmas song, "Uns ist ein Kindlein heut' geborn." That music banished fear and soon doors opened and others came onto the street singing the joyous words.

It is believed the earliest English carol was written about 1410 and describes the Virgin Mary singing a lullaby. Many years later another Englishman, Charles Wesley, wrote over 6,000 hymns during his lifetime and many had a Christmas theme. In 1739 he wrote a hymn with the opening lines "Hark, how all the welkin rings." Welkin was a word for cloud, but in this context it meant heaven. The talented Wesley had been "born again" the year before he penned those words.

Over in Germany a much younger musician, Felix Mendelssohn, wrote a cantata in 1840 memorializing the life of Gutenberg and his invention of the movable type. In 1855 back in England another musician W.H. Cummings put Wesley's words to Mendelssohn's music. He and a colleague mused over that first line, "Hark, how all the welkin rings," and they concluded it didn't quite work.

They liked the reference to the "angelic host" which appeared later in the lyrics. They replaced welkin with "Hark, the herald angels sing" and that carol has been a favorite ever since. It is fascinating to know that Wesley and Mendelssohn lived at different times, never met and never heard the carol we know so well.

What a difference is the story of "Silent Night," which was originally called "A Christmas Song." In the hamlet of Oberndorf, Austria ,Christmas Eve was always celebrated with an organ concert in the small St. Nicholas Church. When a mouse gnawed a hole in the leather bellows of the organ the service for 1818 seemed doomed. Joseph Mohr, the priest, inspired by necessity wrote six stanzas for a song. He turned to the organist Franz Xavier Gruber and asked him to write a simple melody for two voices, accompanied by a guitar. They added a children's choir and the service went on.

The beloved carol was destined to touch hearts worldwide. When the man came to repair the organ later he was given a copy of The Christmas Song which he shared with groups who sang at county fairs. Eventually royalty heard the song and declared it should be used throughout the country at the holiday season. Soon the whole world shared the simple message.

Yes, Christmas music stirs memories that may bring tears, goosebumps or laughter. Scientists have recognized music has this effect but they didn't know how or why. According to an associated press story last week they believe they have an answer. Researchers at Dartmouth University used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brains of eight musicians as they listened to music. They found there was a link between music, emotion and the brain. They concluded the area of the brain just behind the forehead is "naturally wired to appreciate and remember music."

Whatever our response to the music of the season we can feel assured we are just doing what comes naturally.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.