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We sang this song in my old church today. I have it stuck in my head. I've been going through hard times and I'm glad I drove out to my old church, even if round trip it was 3 hours.
Why mess with the rhythm of the Lutheran original? Listen to a version in Germany (any version) - the timing's totally different - and far more interesting.
An unknown French person wrote the music way back when - "Traditional French Carol". This harmonization of it is by the famous English church musician Martin Shaw (1881-1958). I am fairly sure, that being a Presbyterian Church, the musicians and ministers in Buffalo took it from Church Hymnary 4 #281 - a hymnal widely used in churches with a Presbyterian heritage. As an Anglican, I have been known to use hymns from it on occasion too. The music on this video fits the hymn tune and harmonization as set in CH4 absolutely exactly with the exception that an extra verse is added which does not appear in the edition of CH4 in front of me (fourth edition 2014). The unison beginning to the penulitmate line "People look East..." is here sung without the organ - an imaginative and very effective touch. The verse added here - "Birds, though you long have ceased to build ... Love, the bird, is on the way" - is the one where the cymbelstern stop is used - see my later comment below. It is interesting to note from the wikipedia page on Eleanor Farjeon (the poet) that she donated her family book collection to the Dunedin Public Library (south island New Zealand) in the 1960s. Her father had been a journalist there in the 1860s. Dunedin is known for its very strong Scottish Presbyterian heritage. From my perspective sitting here, writing this as I stare out at the Indian Ocean on the western coast of Australia, it is quite a thing here to talk about "the east" (and New Zealand is even further east) - and so the poem has a kind of double meaning for us here in Western Australia. I wonder what my congregation will think when I reflect on this poem with them in my sermon tomorrow (10 December 2023). I should say that I spent thirty or so years of my working life in two of the "eastern states" of Australia.
