Guest post by Nathan Arizona
There are two Christmas songs with what seem like almost endless strings of “o’s” in the word “gloria” – “33 syllables in just one breath,” one expert determined. One of these songs you’re surely familiar with, the other maybe not so much.
The chestnut “Angels We Have Heard on High” tells the familiar Christian nativity story found in Luke’s gospel. It often gets a touch of the solemnity associated with hymns.
The other one is simply about how cool it is that the nativity happened. No gospel narrative, no preaching. ““Ding Dong! Merrily on High” is as cheerful as you might expect from a song with the sound of bells and an exclamation point in the title. “In heaven the bells are ringing:/Ding Dong! Verily the sky/Is riven with angel singing.”
The music for the 20th-century carol is as bright as the words. It’s based on a 16th-century French dancing tune that was thought suitable for the common people. “Angels We Have Heard on High,” published in 1862, is based on an American adaptation of an 18th century French hymn.
A British clergyman named George Ratcliffe Woodward put lyrics to the dance tune and published it as a Christmas carol in 1924. Woodward was a church bell-ringer. Ding Dong. He made up some archaic words for it. Bells are “swungen,” songs are “sungen.”
The song is sungen here by longtime Steeleye Span vocalist Maddy Prior. It’s from her album “A Tapestry of Carols.”
A choral version from King’s College Choir Cambridge.
For comparison, here’s “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
