"O Come, O Come Emmanuel"

O Come, O Come Emmanuel" has always been my favorite Christmas carols.  
This is probably because it was so ancient, gothic, and Gregorian chantish.  Its a Plainsong... or chant.  The first time I ever heard of the term Plainsong was in tenth grade when I bought the Cure album Disintegration.  Which is quite possibly the greatest modern album created to date.  I didn't know at the time what a plainsong was.  Here is the song.    

If you were a fan of the movie Marie Antoinette (with the girl from the "old Spiderman movie, Kirsten Dunst) you may recognize the song from the soundtrack.  There may be many criticisms of the movie, but the soundtrack is awesome.  

Anyway, back on track about the chant/carol ... 

The song was based on what in the Catholic Church is called The Antiphons.  Each verse's title begins with a title for Christ, drawn from Isaiah, and the letters are SARCORE, backwards is Ero Cras which means "Tomorrow I Come".  That gives me chills.  Here is a website which outlines the whole song....http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=958   Although I am not Catholic in my theology, I cannot deny the ancient beauty, tradition and amazing music and art of the church.

I could go on a soapbox trail on that one, citing pieces of music and artists and such, but, onto my main concept again...  

It seems as though O Come, O Come Emmanuel is very popular the past few years.  A lot of musicians have been remaking it.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The Classic Enya

The Classical Piano Guys... these guys are incredible musicians!

The Indie Rock-ish Civil War take..
Folky, Alternative, but surprisingly serene.












The one and only Sufjan Stevens, (I thought he had another name once)

And Last but not Least, the Heavy Metal take...

Of course, I can't leave out the beautiful lyrics.  Out of the original seven, only five are usually sung, but you can't have the backwards acryonym with out the seven, so here they are...

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.

Refrain

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

Refrain

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Refrain

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.

Refrain

O come, O come, great Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law
In cloud and majesty and awe.

Refrain

O come, Thou Root of Jesse’s tree,
An ensign of Thy people be;
Before Thee rulers silent fall;
All peoples on Thy mercy call.

Refrain

O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace. 

Refrain

There is no need for me to ramble on about what the words mean, because quite frankly, it has all been said before and quite better than I could ever do.  Merry Christmas!