Best-Loved Christmas Carols: The Stories Behind Twenty-five Yuletide Favorites
Joy to the World! Surrounded by the holiday season s sleaziness and cheesiness, it baubles and bangles and tinsel and glitter, we re all sometimes tempted to grouse, like Dickens Mr. Scrooge, that Christmas has become but a poor excuse for picking a man s pocket every twenty-fifth of December.  Ronald Clancy's "Best-Loved Christmas Carols" should banish your yuletide humbug blues. .... Anyone craving some holiday cheer, in short, is well advised to toss a Yule log on the nearest flames, curl up with this engrossing history of some of the world s most cherished tunes and pop the CD in. By the time, a few cuts in, the Royal Philharmonic Chorus is belting out Joy to the World, you ll feel like Scrooge after he s finally seen the light. --Savannah Morning News - Doug Wyatt"Best-Love Christmas Carols" is a gift of magnificent proportions to the reading and listening public across America and the English-speaking world. Every page fairly glistens with the sparkle of the Yuletide treasures that carols have become. Here is a fascinating book with little-known facts and interesting stories, luminously gorgeous pictures and sumptuous musical settings - all uniquely packaged, as a unit. . . . There is truly something for everyone: paintings to feast the yes upon, engaging information for the intellect, and heart-felt renditions to reach the soul. . . . It is a present that will continue to give year after year? --Dr. Leonard Van Camp, Retired Director of Choral Activities - Southern Illinois UniversityRonald M. Clancy s boxed set of "Best-Loved Christmas Carols" is such a good idea it is a wonder no one has produced something similar. The set has three parts: a compact disc of the songs, a songbook with lyrics and sheet music, and an illustrated book about the history and message of the songs. The CD has 25 Christmas carols recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Philadelphia s St. Frances de Sales Boy Choir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and others. It is 75 minutes of what I would agree are the best secular and religious Christmas songs - - and by that I mean no repetitive, saccharine Rudolph and Frosty. In the songbook each carol s sheet music and lyrics are set on one page for ease in actually singing them with friends and family. Last is the book of art and essays, which is a work of art itself. There are many full-color reproductions of Nativity and Epiphany paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and lesser-known artists whose works you will recognize from holiday cards. Clancy chose art works that were created at the same time as the songs. So "Lo how a Rose E re Blooming," written in the 15th century, is illustrated with a page from the Salzburg Missal, a rare book in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. This 8-by-10 reproduction can be examined here more closely than would be possible even if you could hold the actual missal in your hand. Clancy chose the illuminated miniature painting "The Tree of Jesse," which shows the Madonna and Child as the flower at the top of a swirling tree that sprouts from the chest of the sleeping Jesse. This book is full of such wonders. --Catholic News Service - Maureen E. Daly--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.