Those of you familiar with the tune (Holst’s CRANHAM) will automatically hear the words it’s usually associated with**. For those who don’t *sigh*, well, there’s always Google… or, here ya go.
The tune always reminds me that it really needs an artist (no, not what passes for an “artist” with the typical recording industry exec, a real one) to make it work for me with Christina Rossetti’s words, especially since singing the tune with the last verse of Rossetti’s poem is problematic. The meter of the tune and the meter of that last verse do not marry well, you see. But, Tine Thing Helseth makes me forget all that.
An absolutely beautiful performance. It’s from her Christmas album, My Heart Is Ever Present. It’s a strong argument of the presence of imago dei in real art.
I could listen to this all day long.
*Only “fair”? Yes:
“pleasing to the eye or mind especially because of fresh, charming, or flawless quality”
I’m adding to that, “pleasing to the eye, EAR or mind especially because of fresh, charming, or flawless quality”. 🙂 Oh, I might add, “sustenance to the soul” just ‘cos.
**Yeh, yeh, I know that’s no way to treat a poor lil preposition, but since I don’t have My Favorite English Teacher standing over me, maybe I can away get it with. *heh*
Miss Tine Thing Helseth. I have featured her videos on my own blog, and bought one of her albums also.
She is as pleasing to the eye as her music is to the ear.
MC
What is it with Norwegian girls with musical talent oozing from their pores? I can recall, almost 35 years ago, turning to my the young woman sitting to my left (who I did not know was my future wife’s room mate) and asking who that young woman with the beautiful voice was (she’s now my wife :-)). Luckily for me, that young woman, while singing, saw me sitting by her room mate and wondered who that guy was sitting “with” her (wasn’t; was just “by” her). Intrigue going both ways… across a crowded room, as it were. And we weren’t even in the South Pacific. 😉
Yeh, Miss Helseth and Miss Alison Balsom (another wonderful trumpet “voice” though not of Norwegian extraction like my wife and Miss Helseth, but one cannot have everything *heh*) have joined such as Wynton Marsalis in my collection of recordings by trumpet virtuosi.