on Gesu Bambino

Dec 26, 2009 14:15

It's something of a Christmas standard, and the only thing that Pietro Yon will be remembered for. (He wrote a lot of Mass settings that had some popularity here in the USA, but with Mass in Latin no longer the default, they're pretty much forgotten now.) Pavarotti sang it for Christmas specials on TV. I always wondered why it sounded so much better in Italian than in English, and guessed that the Italian version must be simpler and more direct.

I finally had a look. Yep. Here's the English:

When blossoms flowered 'mid the snows upon a winter night
Was born the Child the Christmas Rose, The King of Love and Light
The angels sang, the shepherds sang, The grateful earth rejoiced
And at His blessed birth the stars Their exultation voiced.

(Chorus: same as for O Come All Ye Faithful, English or Latin)

Again the heart with rapture glows to greet the holy night
that gave the world its Christmas Rose, Its king of Love and Light.
Let ev'ry voice acclaim His name, The grateful chorus swell
From paradise to earth He came that we with Him might dwell.

Here's a fairly literal translation of the Italian that I found on line:

In a humble cabin,
In cold and poverty,
was born the little holy child
that the world will worship.

CHORUS:
"Hosanna, Hosanna" they sing
With jubilant heart,
Your shepherds and angels,
O king of light and love:
"O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him,
Jesus, Redeemer."

Oh pretty baby, don't cry,
Don't cry, Redeemer,
Your mama rocking you
Kisses you, O Savior.
[CHORUS]

Yon apparently wrote the Italian version himself, and he was a better composer than a poet, but it has a primitive charm to it. As the person who posted that translation noted, it's charming that Jesus is addressed both as a child needing its mother and as Savior and Redeemer -- in the same verse. (Also very much in tune with Catholic theology.) I think of the story from "The Little Flowers of St. Francis" in which Francis tells Brother Juniper to tell a demon pretending to be Jesus, "Open your mouth and I will shit in it!" It's almost that direct. It's about a baby Jesus who needed diapers.

The English version is prim, proper, and bloodless. Someone meeds to do a singable but roughly faithful translation into English of the Italian words. It's probably not going to be me.

I'd love to sing Gesu Bambino in Italian for the feast of the Holy Family tomorrow, but I'm in lousy voice, we don't have a pianist that day, I don't think I can get a MIDI of the music and load it onto the electric piano either, and anyway I'd choke up while singing it (I do that a lot since I stopped taking antidepressants, and it's been nearly a year, so why does it still happen?).
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