🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Sussex Mummers’ Carol

You’ve had a busy few days! Ready to wind down? There’s no better way than with Percy Grainger’s beautiful piano arrangement of this old English carol. Turn the sound up and relax:

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will let you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

The Australian-born British and American composer Percy Grainger (1882–1961) was a key figure in the folk-music revival movement in the early twentieth century, and he produced modern professional arrangements of many traditional melodies that folklorists had collected all through the British Isles. This piano composition is based on a folk carol known to have been sung in the county of Sussex at least as far back as the early 1800s, and probably much earlier.

Granger’s refined and peaceful arrangement is rather far removed from the original setting in which a carol like this would have been performed. All across Europe there are a great variety of carnival-like Christmas and New Year traditions that stretch back into the Middle Ages and beyond, and one of these is the tradition of mummery. In many villages around the New Year it was customary for the townsfolk to dress up in harlequin-like costumes and go from door to door acting out traditional pantomimes and begging for money and food. These troops of mummers — a bit like rowdy Christmas trick-or-treaters — would sing carols and other songs to inspire generosity on the part of their hosts (and to implicitly threaten trickery if gifts were not forthcoming).

Here’s a grand and slightly irregular (that is, realistic) performance of the original Sussex Mummers’ Carol by a winter festival group called the California Revels — it offers a glimpse of how such performances might have once looked in the wild:

You can perhaps see why we at the River Houses have a special fondness for this carol’s lyrics:

God bless the master of this house
 With happiness beside;
Where e’re his body rides or walks,
 His God must be his guide,
 His God must be his guide.

God bless the mistress of this house
 With gold chain round her breast;
Where e’re her body sleeps or wakes,
 Lord, send her soul to rest,
 Lord, send her soul to rest.

God bless your house, your children too,
 Your cattle and your store;
The Lord increase you day by day
 And send you more and more,
 And send you more and more.

What marvelous musical discoveries have you and your students been making in your homeschool during this delightful Holiday Music Month? 🎄

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds during the holidays, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music radio station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on as background music almost every day at this time of year. Won’t you join me? 📻

❡ Olden times and ancient rhymes: What did the Christmas season sound like a hundred years ago and more? Find out from this wonderful collection of historic recordings of American Christmas music, brought together by the Library of Congress. 🎵

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡