Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
The unofficial theme of the blog this week has been Christmas music. What better way to cap off the week than with a post about the best Christmas song ever written, Adolphe Adam’s “O Holy Night“?
Like its cousin “Silent Night,” the story of “O Holy Night” involves a village’s church organ. In 1843, the church organ of the French village of Roquemaure had recently been renovated, so the parish priest asked a local wine merchant and poet, Placide Cappeau, to write a poem to commemorate the occasion. That poem, “Cantique de Noël,” would be set to music a short time later by composer and music critic Adolphe Adam—and Christmas history would be made.
To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.
The Portly Politico 
[…] as yesterday’s SubscribeStar Saturday post on “O Holy Night” (subscribe today for just $1 a month to read it and dozens of other pieces) should have come as no […]
LikeLike
[…] cares? It’s Christmas. Let’s listen to some good […]
LikeLike
[…] poem about Bethlehem following a visit there in 1865. In 1868, he asked the church organist (it’s always the organist, it seems), Lewis Redner, to set the poem to music a week before the Christmas […]
LikeLike
[…] last two songs will, invariably, be the best: “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night.” On the epic “Christ is the Lord” part of the latter, everyone will raise […]
LikeLike