Music Monday: In Dulci Jubilo

To help get into the Christmas mood here on the blog, this Music Monday is brought to you by Mike Oldfield and his rendition of the old Christmas carol, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice.” If you look in your hymnal (which I’m sure you have to hand), you’ll see this carol is set to the tune “In Dulci Jubilo,” which is the title Oldfield gives to his rendition. This recording dates back to 1975 and the sessions that birthed the album “Ommadawn,” which I featured on a previous Music Monday. He released this tune as a single in December of that year, and it made it to number four on the UK charts. I remember hearing it used by the BBC from time to time when they would preview their Christmas programming in the mid-to-late 70s.

The lead instrument on this recording is the recorder. I hear at least two recorders on the track, an alto (which takes the main tune), and a sopranino. In the video there’s another, larger recorder that I think is a bass, though it looks very different to my own bass recorder. These are the only instruments Oldfield does not play himself. Mind you, considering he’s playing acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, drum, tambourine, and keyboards, he’s got plenty on his plate. 🙂

For those who want to play along, here’s the main tune, as played by the alto recorder (click to enlarge):

And here’s the sopranino part (click to enlarge):

If you play the recorder, you’ll know recorders mainly come in two different tunings, C and F. Typically, the tenor and soprano (or descant) recorders are tuned to C, while the bass, alto, and sopranino are tuned to F. This means that the fingering you use to play a C note on the soprano and tenor recorders will produce an F note when applied to the sopranino, alto, and bass. If you’re really well practiced, you can probably translate the notes above to your F-tuned recorder with little difficulty. However, if you need some help, here’s the main tune transposed for the alto (click to enlarge):

These are the note fingerings you should use to play the tune in C-major. And here’s the sopranino part similarly transposed:

You’ll notice I also transposed the chords on the alto part. This is useful if you want to play along on your guitar since Mike Oldfield plays in G with a capo on the fifth fret. But you can play without a capo in C if you prefer.

Finally, here’s the music video: