This third (and near-final) group of spiritual songs for Christmas includes two old favorites:
- Rejoice, all nations (Christos rodilsja)
- Wondrous news (Divnaja novina)
and three NEW English translations of Slavonic hymns:
- Let creation shout with gladness (Vselennaja veselisja)
- Now, Father Adam (Nyni Adame vozveselisja)
- Today in the cave of Bethlehem (V Viflejemi dnes’ Marija)
Please look them over and post your comments below. Wondrous news, in particular, has had a couple of small changes made to the English setting, and I would appreciate your thoughts.
For more about the new hymnal, see The Hymnal Project.
Many thanks to J. Michael Thompson, Kenneth Dilks, and Glenn Sedar for submitting English translations for potential use in the new collection!
Just thinking, if there are only five Christmas hymns, and only two of them are totally familiar, why not just leave them out of the hymnal and refer to some of the many supplements which have been published over the years, including traditional carols like Silent Night and O Come All Ye Faithful?
Dear Father Deacon Paul,
The old (1978) pew book contained 11 Christmas songs and carols in English and Slavonic, all of which made it into the 2007 Byzantine Catholic Hymnal – but several of them had problems, which we’ve been trying to address here, collaboratively. (See the other blog articles.)
The 1969 Christmas booklet from Father Levkulic included “traditional” English Christmas carols, which were included in the MCI Christmas Eve booklet, and which are planned for incorporation into the new hymnal, as you can see from the link in the blog post above.
This is the third batch of Christmas hymns; there were a total of nine that we already covered. I received quite a few requests for additions, usually naming the same 2-3. I now have translations for these hymns, and they are the three “new” hymns linked for discussion in this post.
I hope this answers your concerns!
The Chrismas Carol “Rejoice All Nations” requires an accent on the first note. Even having sung this many times over the years, I still get thrown on the rhythm because of the bad accent on REjoice.
Suggestion:
Change text of first measure from “REjoice all nations, | GOD has…”, to “Nations rejoice, for | GOD has…”
I like your suggestion VERY much, and will be making the change momentarily.