Overall Rating:

5 out of 5

A Miswinter Night's Dream -- Appreciation, November 28, 2009
By RevRog

"LOREENA McKENNITT: A Midwinter Night’s Dream

I am a music-loving semi-retired pastor. Every year as Christmas nears, I look for recent recordings in which creative musicians reinterpret traditional carols or create new ones. When I find them, they enliven my appreciation and deepen my understanding of the holy season.

The most wonderful collections that I have discovered in the past are Joan Baez's Noël, Kathy Mattea's Good News, Elisabeth von Trapp’s Christmas Song and, in 2008, Sarah McLachlan's Wintersong. This year, 2009, my most emotionally thrilling, intellectually challenging and spiritually uplifting discovery is Loreena McKennitt's A Midwinter Night's Dream.

Loreena's original modal music for "The Holly and the Ivy" turns the familiar melody upside down and makes the song sound very mystical. Loreena transports me back to when the early Christians adapted ancient nature symbols to express their vision of Jesus. Despite the objections of Roman churchmen, northern believers happily looked at the holly's white blossom as a symbol of Jesus' purity. The red berry was His blood, the prickle was His thorny crown and the bitter bark was the gall offered to Him to drink on the cross.

Loreena's music, like the culture she inherits, embodies the entire world. Her music reflects the extent of Celtic culture from the time when Celts lived as far east as Galatia in modern Turkey and Galilee where Jesus’ family lived. In her setting of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" Loreena places the singer in Asia, and the “gentlemen” appear to be the three Magi who visit the infant Jesus. The music reminds me also of Native American healing chants from which I have received comfort.

Loreena sings the medieval Advent antiphon “Veni, Emmanuel” in the traditional Latin with exquisite instrumental accompaniment led by the cello, which figures prominently in so much of the music by today’s Celtic artists. Only Joan Baez’s version of the chant equals Loreena’s for elegance and intensity. (Baez’s mother was from Scotland and the Celtic folk influence on Joan’s music has always been evident.)

One paradox in this collection is that Loreena doesn't actually sing "In the Bleak Midwinter." Instead, she and her musical companions play Gustav Holst’s melody so exquisitely that I can hear Christina Rossetti’s text resounding clearly within me. And am I mistaken when I believe I hear melodic echoes of the "Huron Carol" (“’Twas in the moon of wintertime” when “The chiefs from far before him knelt with gifts of fox and beaver pelt”) in Loreena's instrumental "Breton Carol?”

Not all the songs on A Midwinter Night’s Dream relate to Christmas. Loreena’s lovely setting of Archibald Lampman’s “Snow” is as beautiful as Elisabeth von Trapp’s singing of her own music to a very similar poem by Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” on her album Poetic License.

Loreena also sings “Seeds of Love,” a lyric identified as “traditional.” It reminds me of the Biblical Song of Songs, a love song which the Jews adapted as a symbol of God’s love for his people. Eliza Gilkyson set Chapter 2 of the Song to music as “Rose of Sharon,” which Joan Baez recorded on Day After Tomorrow. Loreena’s “Seeds of Love” complements it beautifully.

I first appreciated McKennitt's music when I purchased Parallel Dreams on the recommendation of a friend who knew about the Huron component of my otherwise French and English ancestry. He also knew about my love for Celtic music and thought I would enjoy Loreena's "Huron Beltane Fire Dance." I did enjoy the piece, but I was more deeply moved by Loreena's singing and harp playing on the other songs.

In 2008 I wrote that Sarah McLachlan's interpretations of familiar religious and secular Christmas songs are different enough from the familiar versions that I actually find myself hearing the old words with renewed understanding. This year I realize that the same is even more strikingly true of A Midwinter Night's Dream.

In 2008 I described Sarah McLachlan's album as "melancholy transfigured by hope and peace." In 2009 I describe Loreena McKennitt's as "contemplation enlivened by festivity." Both of them, along with the earlier Baez, Mattea and von Trapp albums, are timeless treasures."