Happy Christmas, &, this Christmas tune was inspired by sections in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James. The recording is just a demo to test the harmonies (hence the shoddy homemade production quality, due to my lack of mixological skills.) Otherwise, it's a pretty straightforward shape-note fuging tune. (I wrote it in aeolian mode so I could get that sexy medieval cadence in the fourth & fifteenth measures, which I always thought should make more appearances in American harmony - - Does anyone know of any other instances in American folk music?) There's a downloadable mp3 here, & a pdf file of some scores here (JAMES is page 2).
JAMESVirgin Mary,
twelve years old and married
To Joseph,
in the temple where she first did bleed.The matriarch was once a teenage bride,
The mother of the world's salvation was a girl who cried.
Weeping Joseph,
I thought she was truer.
No, Mary,
Please, I know no man, Lord, I am pure.
Janus Mary,
mourning & rejoicing,
O Joseph,
see the silent earth expects its king.
Traveling Mary
saddled on a donkey,
Go, Joseph,
find a cave, behold a mystery!
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