I am a music-loving semi-retired pastor.  Every year as Christmas nears, I look
for recent recordings in which creative musicians reinterpret traditional carols
or create new ones.  When I find them, they enliven my appreciation and deepen
my understanding of the holy season.  

The most wonderful collections that I
have discovered in the past are Joan Baezs Noel, Kathy Matteas Good News and, in
2008, Sarah McLachlans Wintersong.  This year, 2009, my most emotionally
thrilling, intellectually challenging and spiritually uplifting discovery is
Loreena McKennitts A Midwinter Nights Dream.

Loreenas original modal music
for "The Holly and the Ivy" turns the familiar melody upside down and makes the
song sound very mystical.  Loreena transports me back to when the early
Christians adapted ancient nature symbols to express their vision of Jesus.
Despite the objections of Roman churchmen, northern believers happily looked at
the hollys white blossom as a symbol of Jesus purity. The red berry was His
blood, the prickle was His thorny crown and the bitter bark was the gall offered
to Him to drink on the cross.  

Loreenas music is "universal."  It reflects
the extent of Celtic culture from the time when Celts lived as far east as
Galatia in modern Turkey.  Loreenas setting of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen"
places the singer in Asia, and the "gentlemen" are the Magi who visit the infant
Jesus.  The music reminds me also of Native American healing chants which have
comforted me in the past. 
  
One paradox in this collection is that this
gifted singer  doesnt actually sing "In the Bleak Midwinter."  Instead, Loreena
and her musical companions play Gustav Holsts melody so exquisitely that I can
hear Christina Rossettis text (which Sarah McLachlan sings on Wintersong)
resounding clearly within me.  And am I mistaken when I hear melodic echoes of
the "Huron Carol" ("Twas in the moon of wintertime" when "The chiefs from far
before him knelt with gifts of fox and beaver pelt") in Loreenas instrumental
"Breton Carol?"  

Not all the songs on A Midwinter Nights Dream relate to
Christmas. Loreenas lovely setting of Archibald Lampmans "Snow" is as beautiful
as Elisabeth von Trapps singing of her own music to a very similar poem by
Robert Frost, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" on her album Poetic
License. 

I first appreciated McKennitts music when I purchased Parallel
Dreams on the recommendation of a friend who knew about the Huron component of
my otherwise French and English ancestry.  He also knew about my love for Celtic
music and thought I would enjoy Loreenas "Huron Beltane Fire Dance."  I did
enjoy the piece, but I was more deeply moved by Loreenas singing and harp
playing on the other songs.  

In 2008 I wrote that Sarah McLachlans
interpretations of familiar religious and secular Christmas songs are different
enough from the familiar versions that I actually find myself hearing the old
words with renewed understanding.  This year I realize that the same is even
more strikingly true of A Midwinter Nights Dream.  

I 2008 I described Sarah
McLachlans album as "melancholy transfigured by hope and peace." In 2009 I
describe Loreena McKennitts as "contemplation enlivened by festivity."  Both of
them, along with the earlier Baez and Mattea albums, are timeless treasures.