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Abbie Betinis
Abbie Betinis Music Company
Carol of the Stranger
A warm, hearty carol that expands to express a big message, appropriate all year.
SATB a cappella
This warm, hearty carol adds voices and texture with each verse to create a musical haven of welcome, trust and love. Verse 3’s flexible voicing allows low voices to shine on the melody. Verse 4’s doublings become even richer with an optional soaring descant. A collaboration with celebrated poet Michael Dennis Browne, the first line “Peace and Grace Be to This House” hangs on a plaque above the poet’s doorway. The lyrics challenge each of us to create a bigger container, widening the house (of self) to embrace more contraries and allow spaciousness of spirit. Abbie represents the third generation of Christmas carol composers in her family, beginning in the 1920s with her great-grandfather, then her great-uncle Alfred Burt. “Carol of the Stranger” premiered on Minnesota Public Radio in 2013, before being sent as a Christmas card to family and friends. (Suggested pairing: Alfred Burt’s Christ in the Stranger’s Guise.)
Reviews:
“Michael Dennis Browne wrote the words for “Carol of the Stranger,” with Abbie’s harmonies opening like the heart at Christmas.”
-John Birge, Minnesota Public Radio
“The welcome rhythmic spring in the step of Abbie Betinis’s “Carol of the Stranger” makes it stand out, and I would have welcomed a bit more in that vein.
–Bernard Hughes, theartsdesk.com
“Interesting to hear a folk-like Shaker style in Abble Betinis’ “Carol of the Stranger,” and it works brilliantly thanks also to the accuracy of The Ebor Singers’ performance. Not just a heart-warming disc, but as fascinating mix of cross-connections, new arrangements and the familiar, all supremely performed.”
-Colin Clarke, Classical Explorer (reviewing the album “Wishes and Candles: American Christmas Music,” Ebor Singers)
Composer’s Notes
I often tell choirs to think of this song as engaging “the other” – even stylistically between the verse and refrain. The verse is buoyant, lusty, hearty! (even a little “pirate arm!”) The refrain is legato… taffy… sung with an earnest longing.
-Abbie Betinis
These lyrics were written fast, intuitively, while the ebullient Abbie was over visiting. I think I read her from my current notebook the words of the refrain, which had simply occurred to me a few days previously. Abbie improvised a melody for the refrain and I was immediately taken with it. (I love the music!)
In his Letters to a Young Poet,” Rilke suggests that we should often “live the questions” rather than seek answers—which, if they were available, we simply couldn’t handle. There’s a paradox at the heart of this piece—initially, tell anyone but those you love “and desire your joy” some possibly intimate secret.
For myself, I call a poem “an opportunity for the reader to imagine.”
There’s a narrative arc, a progression—tell the Stranger, the Silence, the Angel—intermediaries, as it were–and finally the (Divine) Mystery. The angel (messenger: aggelos) is perhaps the most immediate predecessor to the Divine her/himself—with whom, more than anyone else, we wish (long) to tell our most intimate secrets and hopes—and our love.
So we have to work our way, as it were, toward the Divine Mystery—ending there, if we are so blessed, but unable to begin there. We have to generate the courage, perhaps, climb the stairs on our knees like the pilgrims we are.
Another main idea, out of Charlotte Joko Beck (Everyday Zen), is that each of us needs to become “a bigger container” (ABC), and so the house (of self) must be widened, embrace more contraries. We need to “increase the circle of compassion” (Einstein, I think), hold more polarities and contraries within ourselves. The aim is spaciousness of spirit. (In the gospel of John we read “He must grow greater, I must grow less.”)
–-Michael Dennis Browne
Text
Peace and grace be to this house
Where all are welcomed in;
Receive the guest, receive this heart:
Tell the Stranger, tell.
Tell the Stranger what you cannot tell
Those who love you and desire your joy:
Tell.
Make tall your walls, make long these beams,
Who once believed alone;
Make wide the circle, feed the fire:
Tell the Silence, tell.
Tell the Silence what you cannot tell
Those who love you and desire your joy.
Tell.
Blessings be upon this place,
Let every wound be healed,
Let every secret, every dream:
Tell the Angel, tell.
Tell the Angel what you cannot tell
Those who love you and desire your joy.
Tell.
Peace and grace be to this house,
All will be returned;
Let every soul be called your own,
Tell the Mystery, tell.
Tell the Mystery what you long to tell
Those who love you and desire your joy.
Tell.
-Michael Dennis Browne
Lyrics © 2013. These lyrics are under copyright, but may be reprinted from this website for use in concert programs related to this musical work. For permission to reprint for any other purpose, please contact the copyright holder.
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