"What Child Is This" Lyrics

[benedictgal]

Is it?

I have no great love for OCP, however as a paid-up member of the early music movement I have several recordings of this from period music specialists (all secular performance ensembles, no axes to grind one way or the other and all working from original manuscripts) and I have never heard this verse before.

Everyone absolutely sure it is on the original manuscripts?

(I have no problem with the verse if it isn’t original … but sometimes people who are not musicologists and who have no working knowledge of period music make claims that aren’t quite correct …)

OCP has, in fact, mangled a lot of sacred music. In fact, the BCDW (Bishops Committee on Divine Worship) called to task the fact that supposedly archaic language in hymns had been removed and subsequently rendered inaccurate. When I looked at these hymns, they all came from OCP. I also looked up the hymn, which is the focus of this thread, and found that it was in OCP.

If the hymn is located in the Adoremus hymnal, then there is credence to what everyone else is saying.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I loved singing this song, back when I played in the folk group in my parish.

Using finger style picking on an acoustic guitar, the hymn was beautiful and people always came up after Mass and complimented us on the way we did the hymn.

Jim