s Thoughts from the Physics Chick: Christmas carols: Kommet, ihr Hirten

Friday, May 22, 2009

Christmas carols: Kommet, ihr Hirten

This is a traditional song from Bohemia. (There are versions of this song in both German and Czech, but the Czech version isn't a Christmas carol.) As it turns out, the hardest thing about finding videos of this carol was finding one that wasn't horribly cheesy. I think the tune is quite lovely, in a wistful, folk song kind of way, but apparently it inspired many choir directors in the 1970s to force entire children's choirs to dress in matching lederhosen for TV specials. This video, which features lip-synching shepherds (the "Hirten" of the title), is par for the course.

Unknown, 1981(?):



I did finally find this instrumental version, which is nice.

Unknown, 2008:



And then I found this version, arranged for voice, guitar, bongo drums, and, um, fish-shaped percussion thingy. This made wading through all of the cheesy 70s videos worth it.

Raketenklee (Bidi, Ray and Marc Clover), 2008:



(If anyone's German is better than mine, I'd be curious to know what they're saying at the beginning and end of the song.)

1 Comments:

At April 24, 2010 8:51 AM, Blogger Marc C Lover said...

Hey Physic Chick!
Thx for using our video(raketenklee) in our blog and thx for the kind feedback to it... the one in the middle by the way is by the Kelly Family, this half irish half american folkband. They are very cheesy and were very big in germany and they are singing this song with a horrible accent. ;) but not bad .. well trained... What we are talking about in the begining of our video is basicly that we explain the story of the angles in the song going to the shepperds and telling them about the new born child ... the translation of the lyrics are: come all you shepperds you man and women, come to see the lovely new born child.. bla bla bla.. and we try to explain in a ironic not really to be taken serious - adressed to children-language how excited the angels were when they found out about jesus birth and then they couldn't wait to tell the shepperds and so on... but basilcy we talking a lot of bullshit... :)
Anyway thx for featuring us!!! check out our metallica tribute-videos under the name "rocketclover" on youtube maybe you like this stuff as well! (ADVERT ADVERT ADVERT)
THX and so long!!!!

Green greets Marc C Lover

 

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