Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/597

CAROL. 

But these were not carols in the popular sense, or for popular use. They exhibit the same abundance of contrapuntal resources which is conspicuous in Byrd's other compositions; nor do they differ, except so far as they may be affected by the character of the words, from other madrigalian music of the Elizabethan era. They may well be compared, both in regard to their structure and their position in the development of vocal music, with the Italian and French examples of a similar treatment of this species of composition referred to under ../Noel.

The 'Sacred Hymnes,' of Byrd's contemporary John Amner, published in the year 1615, include two 'Motects' for Christmas, each for six voices. The former, which begins 'O yee little flock, O ye faithful shepherds,' is divided into three parts; the latter, of which the first words are 'Loe, how from heaven like stars the angels flying,' into two. There is also a carol, 'Upon my lap my Soveraigne sits,' which approaches more to the character of a part-song, in the 'Private Musicke' of Martin Peerson, printed in the year 1620.

Meanwhile, no doubt, the older and simpler kind of Christmas carol held its place among the lower orders of society; and it reappeared, which these more elaborate and artificial forms of Christmas songs never did, when the pressure of the Puritan ascendancy which prevailed during the Commonwealth was removed. Both before and after that period books of carols for Christmas Day and its attendant feasts were printed, with the names of the tunes to which they were to be sung. These are in most cases popular airs of secular character. But gradually even these musical directions disappeared. During the last century the carol literature was of the humblest kind. Sheets of words were printed for the use of itinerant singers; but if the strains to which they were to be sung were committed to paper at all, the possession of them must have been pretty well confined to parish clerks and village amateurs. Still they were handed on by tradition; and many of them have now been rescued from oblivion, and may even now be heard, in a more or less modernized form.

The first person who attempted to fix these vanishing memories of the past seems to have been Davies Gilbert, F.R.S., etc., who in the year 1822 published 'Some Ancient Christmas Carols with the Tunes to which they were formerly sung in the West of England'; 'being desirous,' as he says in his preface, 'of preserving them in their actual forms … as specimens of times now passed away, and of religious feelings superseded by others of a different cast.' Another reason he gives for so doing is the delight they afforded him in his youth, when, as he seems to imply, they were sung in churches on Christmas Day, and in private houses on Christmas Eve.

The first line of the first Carol in his collection is as follows:—

Its strange tonality seems to indicate a pedigree of centuries, and an ancestry among the Ecclesiastical Modes. [ H. R. B.]

CARPENTRAS. Additions and corrections for the article will be found under, vol. i. 588, 9.

CARTER,. Add that he was organist of St. Werbergh's in Dublin from 1751 to 1769. The second sentence of the article is to be omitted,