I’m not sure who is responsible for translating Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer into latin and setting it to plainsong.
Whoever it was, they have earned an Advent Blessing and a Tip of the Biretta from me.
You can hear it here:
Rudolphus
Comments
35 responses to “Rudolphus”
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Joy! I love the emphatically low plunge on “misero” and the vision of all the reindeer joining in the Alleluia – appeals to my sense of the absurd…
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It’s wonderful!
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I have it from an authoritative source that the text is based on the most common translation, which has been circulating on the net for quite some time, with slight emendations to make it more idiomatically Latin.
As for the music, well… let’s just say: Advent Blessing received. Glad you liked it. 🙂-
Many thanks Eyolf – you’ve made lots of people happy with this today.
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The Share button shows that it can be shared to Pinterest but it can’t be done. I tried that and got the following:
Whoops! Parameter ‘image_url’ (value //i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000065210350-tjfqik-t200x200.jpg?d53bf9f) is not a valid URL format.
Can that be fixed?
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I just had to add it manually to Pinterest. It could actually be more of Pinterest’s issues. I know lately I have had to change browsers to get things to pin there.
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I’m not sure where you were seeing a Pinterest button. I’ve just added one to the share button at the bottom of each post but it wasn’t there earlier.
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As an eponymous member of that famed reindeer’s family, I am deeply appreciative of this reproduction of the original hymn to my humble, maligned, persecuted, and yet finally honored ancestor.
And as an Anglican, the rendition of the hymn is a most faithful expression of my ancestor’s humble servant’s heart.
Yours,
Markus Rudolphus – aka, Mark Rudolph
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There needs to be another hyphen in “ducere”. Still, it is a wonderful processional antiphon, fully worthy to be added to Oxf. Bodl. Laud misc. 4 from which years ago I got a lot of highly topical material.
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Yes, you’re right – I noticed yesterday, so the official version at http://oestrem.com/thingstwice has it correctly. But thanks for noticing and notifying.
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This is brilliant. Made my evening.
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This is excellent. Although personally I prefer the Gabrieli setting, in which an extra quartet jumps in with “Reno” and “Sicut globulus electricus”.
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One question: is this available on iTunes? I want this forever.
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I’ve added a download link.
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The “Download” button installs a toolbar/program which does not actually allow one to download from this site. Message: no video found. Oh well. another useless thing to uninstall.
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I’m no classicist, so no surprise that the first word ‘reno’ didn’t seem familiar. Undeterred, I checked for a definition online. What I discovered would not make comfortable reading for Rudolph: ‘deerskin’ ‘fur coat’…
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true – perhaps tarandrus would have been a little more Rudolph-friendly: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dtarandrus
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‘Tarandrus’ – another unfamiliar word, only previously spotted (by me at least) as a plural below line 3 of the music above. Amazed to discover that although the northern edge of the Roman hegemony lay well south of ‘Terra Tarandrorum’, word (or maybe ‘reni’) of reindeer (or possibly some other creature of the frozen northern lands) nonetheless reached Pliny and his compatriots. Agree that ‘tarandrus’ would be much more Rudolph-friendly, but ‘reno’ adds a wry twist for those in the know. Thanks to John for help with extending my very limited Latin vocabulary.
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