This post presents not just that first set of holiday songs, but adds Volume II, which Shaw recorded in 1952.
Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume I
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Christmas Hymns and Carols contains 25 selections spread across four 78s, with some of the selections quite brief. This enabled the unaccompanied chorus to vary its program without monotony setting in. While most of the numbers will be familiar to us today, several of them were less well known at the time - "I Wonder as I Wander" had been popularized by John Jacob Niles only a few years before, and Shaw added "Patapan,""Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella,""The Carol of the Bells" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain" before they became ubiquitous.
"The singing here (all unaccompanied) is characterized throughout by fine spirit, usually accurate if not always quite perfect intonation, and clear diction," wrote the American Record Guide critic - praise that understates the quality of the singing on display, which is positive and rhythmically secure while also seeming completely natural.
The recordings were done in December 1945 and June 1946 in New York's Lotos Club, which was then on W. 57th Street down the block from Carnegie Hall. I worked from needle drops of the 78 set found on Internet Archive, which the resulting sound pleasing and truthful, if not overly spacious.
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| At an early recording session |
Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume II
The first collection of hymns and carols was so successful that RCA Victor had Shaw's troupe compile a second volume in 1952. In the meantime, the Chorale had branched out into hymns of Thanksgiving, which recently appeared here, and Easter songs, both recorded in 1950.
Victor used the same cover illustration for the second Christmas set as the first, while giving Shaw more prominent billing.
The conductor had established a permanent chorale in 1948. The back cover of Volume II names its members, including such well known singers as Lois Winter, Florence Kopleff, Clayton Krehbiel, Russell Oberlin, Warren Galjour and Calvin Marsh.
Despite its title, this collection includes very few hymns. In his notes, Shaw explained, "In our first album of Christmas music some years ago we recorded in addition to certain carols the twelve most familiar Christmas hymns; and in this album we had thought to include some five or six additional hymns next in familiarity. Time after time, seeking to find point of proper inclusion within the sequence of carols, the hymns would remain pedestrian, pedantic, faded and inarticulate. One by one they dropped out of the album. Only the greatest of composed Christmas music - a Bach chorale, a motet of Vittoria, or a chanson of Costeley - these only proved suitable companions to the beauty and sensitivity of anonymous folk music."
The reviewer for The New Records noted that the first volume "is probably the most popular item in the whole Christmas repertory," adding that "we have nothing but praise for Mr. Shaw's second volume."
The sessions were in July and August, 1952 in New York's Manhattan Center, near Penn Station on W. 34th Street. The transfers come from my copy of the original LP. The sound is excellent; more resonant than that from the Lotos Club. The singing is again superb.
