Third Sunday of Advent: "What Sweeter Music" with Paintings by Giotto

Dear friends,

My fellow blogger Karen Campbell posted this music on her blog this morning.

"What Sweeter Music"

King’s College Choir, Cambridge

John Reutter, music and arrangement

What sweeter music can we bring

Than a carol, for to sing

The birth of this our heavenly King?

Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,

And give the honor to this day,

That sees December turned to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn

Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,

Thus, on the sudden? Come and see

The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth

Gives life and luster, public mirth,

To heaven, and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,

Who, with his sunshine and his showers,

Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part

Of all the house here, is the heart.

Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,

And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring,

Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

"The Birth of Jesus" and "Adoration of the Magi" by Giotto (1267-1337) are just part of the series of frescoes found in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. We first saw them in the book The Glorious Impossible by Madeline L'Engle, but I then found them on-line at http://www.wga.hu/.