Day 357: Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen

Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen arr. by – Jan Sandström Composed by Michael Praetorius
performed by Dale Warland Singers

You must turn this up and use headphones to get the full effect of this arrangement.

“Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” is an easy carol to write about, because I do not have to convince you it is beautiful. Pull up any choral recording, slide over to the penultimate phrase—“amid the cold of winter”—and listen hard to that last word. Between the first and second syllable of winter, the minor chord blossoms into major.
[Many] versions are lovely, but they’re not exactly justifying corporeal existence. For that, we have to turn to the Swedish composer Jan Sandström’s more recent choral arrangement… Every harmony has been taken from Praetorius’s original and extended, embellished for maximum ethereality. I’ve heard it said that, when written music succeeds, you enter a single life-world designed by the composer and awakened by the performers. We don’t only enter Sandström’s version, though. He gives us time to wander around, look at the decor, and settle into a sofa made of well-tuned vowels. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/lo-how-a-rose-eer-blooming/421518/