Birdsong

I opened the front door this morning to check for Amazon packages. I wasn't looking for anything specific, but in 2018 you never know what you may have ordered 3 or 4 days ago and forgotten about.

Anyway.

I opened the front door about 7:15 this morning, felt the cold air on my face, saw the eastern sky still streaked with bright clouds from rising sun. And heard birds singing. I thought of the carol--the Catalonian "Carol of the Birds"--my little choir sang in the Christmas concert on Sunday:

En veure despuntar El major illuminar En la nit mes joiosa;
Els ocellettes cantant a festejarlo van, Amb sa veu melindrosa. 

In midst of darkest night a lovely star shines bright And sends the darkness fleeing.
The birds awake in song and singing all night long They voice our hearts rejoicing.

It's a minor-key carol with an exotic sound (exotic, at least, in a neo-gothic Lutheran church). The language is Catalan, French-inflected Spanish. The setting by Joan Varner has a few parallel fourths in the harmony and a flute, fluttering and singing above and around the treble choir and piano.

It was the hardest of the set of three carols we sang, with a slow, sustained melody, strange words, odd vowels. So it was late in the rehearsal process before I gave much thought to the words in the English text. Even now, I don't really have the images straight in my mind. Logically, it's the star that sends the darkness fleeing, but the unarticulated image linked to the music in my brain is the birdsong breaking through the darkness, as light chasing the darkness away. In a painting the star would shine over everything, revealing the birds awake in the trees on the night of Jesus' birth. But in music, in this carol--it's the sound of the flute, the bird bouncing from branch to branch, that tells of the rejoicing.

The birds sing every morning. I have heard them at 4 a.m., when I'm awake and fretting. They're still singing outside my window now, as I'm finishing up here and turning my mind towards the day's work.

Rejoicing in the Lord. At Christmas. Always.