Strip away the commercialism and associations with Christianity, and Christmas is actually rather lovely.
In colder climates, coloured lights reflect and refract on snow and ice while friends and family come together over a cosy hearth to exchange gifts and good cheer, insulated against the hoary darkness outside. It’s no coincidence that many if not most cultures in the Northern Hemisphere have some form of celebration near the Solstice — the coldest, darkest, shortest day of the year.
On their newest, MydWynter, early music mainstays Mediæval Bæbes imbue a series of Christmas classics and rarities with some of this timeless pagan magic with a mixture of the celestial madrigals for which they’re best-known and a rich tapestry of authentic, period-specific instrumentation like the viola de gamba or half-a-dozen different recorders.This isn’t just another album of Christmas carols, though. Many seasonal favourites get new arrangements, like album opener and perennial favourite “Carol of the Bells”, featuring a mystical, mysterious lead vocal from Katharine Blake atop a Bacchae-like backing chorus, only to culminate in a devastating fiddle outro. It manages to evoke the sacredness of the holiday while simultaneously sounding ruminative and personal, like standing outside a church on Christmas Eve, letting yourself be transported by the sounds and the festival of lights.
“Deck the Halls” could hardly sound more traditional, on the other hand, with its buzzing recorders and nightingale soprano sounding straight out of some mediæval court. “Personent Hodie,” a rare Finnish carol, furthers that illusion, with a raw, reedy hurdy-gurdy melody and foot-stomping, hand-clapping beat amping up the pagan energy.
This isn’t the first time that Mediæval Bæbes have released an album of Christmas music — in fact, they’ve been adapting traditional holiday music for their unique style of gothic choral music for nearly twenty years, beginning with 2003’s Mistletoe And Wine, a favourite among their extensive, sprawling back-catalogue; and then again a little over a decade later with 2014’s Of Kings And Angels. MydWynter continues in the tradition of the first two, with the Mediæval Bæbes’ signature take on women’s choral music, and will assuredly appeal to fans of their earlier volumes.
MydWinter is unique among their Christmas albums, though, and among their discography in general. While their signature large chorus aesthetic, with their crystal-clear, heartingly pure vocals still taking a place of prominence, the period instruments are more prominent, mixed more in the foreground and given more focus. Instead of a very excellent a capella album — like much of Mediæval Bæbes’ material comes across as, historically — MydWynter feels more like a symphony, and an excellent one at that. Given how much attention Katharine Blake and the Mediæval Bæbes give to research and period-specific authenticity, it’s a nice touch, and makes MydWynter much more than just another Christmas record.Whether you’re a Christmas music fanatic, a fan of early and renaissance music, or the Mediæval Bæbes, you’ll dig MydWynter, whether or not you observe the holiday.
-J Simpson-
