18 December 2004   7.30pm
National Centre for Early Music
The York Waits

York Early Music Christmas Festival

Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Yule Riding –The York Waits
and Deborah Catterall

Yule Horn and Yoole-girthol proclamation.
Proface! Welcome! Anon English, c.1500

Caritas abundat Hildegerd von Binghen (1098-1179)
Gabriel fram Heven King. Anon 14th C.

As I rode out this enderes night (Coventry Shepherds’ carol).
Lully, lulla, thow little tyne child (The Coventry Carol). Anon 1591.

Green groweth the Hollie. Henry VIII (1509-1547)
Une Jeune Pucelle French trad. 16th/17th C

Picardy. French trad.

Le triste état de cette pauvre étable. Provence, 1613. Arr Bayley.

Chantons, Bergéres/ Quelle est cette odeur? French trad.

O heyligh saligh Bethlehem. Dutch 17th C.
Courantes Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)

El Noi de la Mare.
El desembre congelat. Catalan trad, arr. Bayley.
Touro-louro-louro!lou gau canto Provencal trad.

INTERVAL

In dulci jubilo. Settings by Michael Praetorius (1571-1621),
Bartholomaus Gesius (c.1555-1613),
Johann Walther (1496-1570)
Johannes Eccard (1553-1611).

En! Natus est Emanuel.
Psallite Unigenito. Praetorius.

Joseph, lieber, Joseph mein. Johann Walther (1496-1570)

Parvulus nobis nascitur. Piae Cantiones (1582), arr. T.J.Bayley.

Piva Ferrarese Giovanni Ambrosio Dalza (pub.1508)
Quando nascette Ninno. Neapolitan trad. Arr. Bayley.

Past Three O’Clock English trad. 17th C
The Night Watch Anthony Holborne, 1599
Hollis Berrie anon. c.1600

Now Winter Nights Enlarge. Thomas Campian (1567-1620).
Christmas Cheer
The Old Year Now Away is Fled English trad. 17th C

The Cradle Holborne, 1599
Chestnut. English trad. Arr. Bayley.

Wassails English trad.
The Waits’ Wassail Anon. England, 16th C.

Christemas hath made an end. Trad. English. Arr Bayley.




Tim Bayley (shawm, curtal, flute, recorder, bagpipes, hurdy gurdy, harp, pipe and tabor); William Marshall (sackbut, recorder, guitar, cittern, bagpipes); James Merryweather (shawm, bagpipes, curtal); John Peel (lute, cittern, recorder, shawm, bagpipes); Ian Richardson (shawm, recorder, flute, hurdy gurdy, pipe and tabor); Roger Richardson (shawm, recorder).

Yule Riding in York

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! We command that the peace of our lady the Queen be well kept by night and day but that all manner of whores, thieves, dice players and other unthrifty folk be welcome to the city, whether they come late or early, at the reverence of the High Feast of Yule till the Twelve Days be past. God save the Queen!

IT was on December 21 – St Thomas’s Day – that the ceremony of Yule Riding took place in the City of York. It signified the arrival of Christmas, with its twelve days of merriment. One person adopted the guise of Yule, carrying a leg of lamb and a cake, and another took the role of Yule’s Wife. Nuts were thrown into the crowd and the procession was accompanied by loud music.
Yule is now effectively a synonym for Christmas, but originally it was the Norse midwinter festival. Perhaps its late survival in York was a vestige of the city’s Viking past. But by the early 1570s such a boisterous celebration as Yule Riding, with its barely concealed pagan symbolism, had become highly offensive to the puritan sensibilities of Archbishop Edmund Grindal. The figures of Yule and Yule’s wife, he complained, “ ride through the city very undecently and uncomely, drawing great concourses of people after them to gaze, often times committing other enormities”.
An anonymous broadside balladeer sprang to the defence of tradition by penning “Yule in York”, in which he put a pious Christian gloss on the proceedings. He attempted to persuade his readers – and himself, perhaps – that Yule, far from being a heathen word of Norse origins, was, in fact derived from the Hebrew Yulath, meaning “a babe is born”. He also averred that the nuts thrown into the crowd “put us in remembrance of that most noble Nut our saviour’s blessed body”.
As for the musical accompaniment, the balladeer proclaimed that “the shalme and musicke resemble the mirth and melody of Angels”. So although “Yule in York” might have been an outrageous piece of special pleading, the poem does at least tell us that the ceremony of Yule Riding was accompanied by players of shawms, which were the favoured instruments of the city’s waits, or salaried musicians.
After the Archbishop’s protests, the Yule Riding was banned in 1572. But the winter season saw other rituals in York.
On St Thomas’s Day the city’s Sheriffs would welcome the arrival of the High Feast of Yule by reading the Yoole-girthol, a remarkably liberal proclamation that “all manner of whores, thieves, dice-players and other unthrifty folk” were welcome in the city during the Twelve Days. This topsy turvy view of law and order can be seen as part of a wider and ancient Christmas, indeed pre-Christian, Saturnalian tradition of “legitimised disorder” which included such anarchic elements as the election of Boy Bishops (a Bairn Bishop in York) and Lords of Misrule.
After its first proclamation, the Yoole-girthol was repeated at the four gates of the city by the Sheriffs’ sergeants, preceded by the blowing of a horn.
Somewhat earlier, in mid-November, was the Sheriffs’ Riding, a spectacular ceremony in which the b-ylaws of York were proclaimed at various places throughout the city. The lavish procession was headed by the city’s waits, “in their scarlet liveries and silver badges playing all the way through the streets”. This custom was long-lived, still being observed in the 18th century, and in recent decades the Sheriffs’ Riding has been revived in some particulars, incorporating aspects of the Yoole-girthol ceremony. It takes place on the evening of St Thomas’s Day, so that it also provides an echo of the Yule Riding.
Today’s York Waits, who aim to recreate the city’s band as it was in its Tudor heyday, regularly accompany this latter-day Sheriff’s Riding – in which the city’s now sole Sheriff and its Lord Mayor participate – and the sound of their shawms means that “the mirth and melody of Angels” is heard again through the frosty winter streets of York.
This concert begins in an English city, evoking an ancient Yuletide ceremony, but soon it sets off on a musical journey throughout renaissance Europe, from elaborate German settings of Christmas melodies to simple, affecting French Noels and songs from the Mediterranean. It nears its conclusion, however, with a wistful English song that laments the end of the Twelve Days – and thus the beginning of the working year. The next Yule Riding seems far, far away…

Please note that tickets will now be available on the door.

Tickets  Adult: £10.00  Concession: £8.00  
Young people: £ 5.00  

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