IT'S ADVENT!
Or, why Marcy Priest's 'Come thou long expected Jesus' is the sound of Advent itself
I never appreciated the liturgical calendar growing up. My childhood church denomination, for all its faults (not speaking of sin and grace, for instance) did observe the church calendar quite closely. Maybe because of the church’s shortcomings, I never thought of Advent as anything more than a time of longer church services because we lit some candles, and abstract talk of getting ready for Christmas.
I’m still not particularly liturgical, nor have most of the churches I’ve attended as an adult been. But my appreciation for Advent has grown. Yes, it is a time of preparing and waiting to celebrate Jesus’ birth on Christmas day. But Christ’s church wasn’t founded at his birth; the story of grace and redemption only really gets going after Christmas. There’s a lot further to go. In some ways, then, Advent is the furthest we get from salvation and sanctification; Advent is a dark time in its own way.
I’ve always been drawn to the darker stories and tragedies. I don’t mind an unhappy ending because it makes sense: there’s a lot of unhappy endings in our lives here on earth. Maybe I am unique in seeing a darkness in the season of Advent, but darkness does not have to mean somber and sorrow. In fact, I see great joy in the distance Advent represents, for much the same reason that I’ve always appreciated 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Which is to say: it’s often easier to follow God, to find joy, while stuck in the darkness.
So this waiting excites me. Even though it’s waiting just for Jesus’ birth, I feel myself reaching for God more closely, and seeking redemption as the distance between now and the new creation seems at its greatest.
I also love Advent because it’s the time of year to listen to Marcy Priest’s version of Come Thou Long Expected Jesus over and over and over again. I adore this version. If you don’t know it, check it out here, and then read on and see you hear it the way I do.
The hymn in its standard form is great, and many contemporary artists do it nicely too. But Marcy Priest created a rendition that goes beyond mere song or hymn, beyond an elevated vocalization of holy words, to create an artistic artifact which transforms words and music into the sound of Advent itself. Let me show you why.
First of all, though the text of the original hymn is short, Priest makes it even shorter. That’s a good thing, for the purposes of the art she’s going to create. Each verse of the original is comprised of two parts:
the first half, comprising of two poetic phrases (i.e. in verse 1: Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee.), set musically to one identical, repeated musical phrase. There are clear cadences1 at the end of these phrases, and they are authentic cadences, reinforcing the home key.
the second half, also comprising of two poetic phrases (i.e. in verse 1: Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art; dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.) set musically to two phrases which are different musically, though of equal length. The first phrase ends with a half cadence, the second an authentic cadence.
Priest takes just the first two phrases of each verse. Later on, we get the second two phrases of verse 1 only. We’ll come back to this point.
A quick rumination on chord progressions: In ‘classical’ music theory, we look at how chords are combined in strategic ways to create musical phrases. Different chords have different roles in a musical phrase, depending on their relationship to the ‘tonic’, that is, the key a piece is set in, or, the singular note which sounds like ‘home’, the note on which the music settles to sound final. The harmony of a simple phrase might begin on the tonic chord, move to a complementary chord (often one that is ‘subdominant’ in nature), and then move to the most (or one of the most) distant chord from the tonic. This chord (usually the one called the ‘dominant’) is quite dissonant with the tonic chord and it is this tension which has been the driving force of the entire chord progression, the force behind the musical phrase itself. Either the phrase ends hanging on this chord (a half cadence), or it resolves back to the tonic (an authentic cadence; there’s also something called a deceptive cadence but we don’t need to get into that right now.)
In pop music, this driving force of consonance, to dissonance, back to consonance does not exist in the same way. Pop music uses the same chords, and there are allusions to half, authentic, or deceptive cadences. But these chords are used in an inevitable, rather than functional, way. The tonic is reinforced not by contrasting the tonic chord with the dominant chord, but by pure repetition. Said another way, chord progressions in pop music act more like a syllabic rhythm scheme in poetry while chord progressions in classical music are more like the way parts of speech and punctuation combine to create diagrammable sentences.
So that said, the original hymn Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, is set with chord progressions in the classical manner. Marcy Priest’s song, however, uses pop music progressions. Now a lot of classical musicians look down on pop music for this reason. They see pop music as having overly repetitive chord progressions that don’t really go anywhere, that just repeat and repeat. But I am not making this point derisively.
If ever a song should be set with pop progressions, it’s an Advent song. Advent is a time of waiting. Classical musical phrases prove too concrete, too directionally oriented, and too final; pop musical phrases are more ambiguous. There is a sense of home, musically, because there is no doubt which chord is the tonic (even if you’re not musical or versed in music theory, you will know which chord is ‘home’). And as so, lyrically we sing this hymn, just as we celebrate Advent every year, knowing the ending.
I think this is one reason I’m attracted to the transitory periods of the liturgical calendar, say, Advent and Lent, rather than the prominent occasion these periods lead to, Christmas and Easter. The periods of waiting are where the mystery lies, and the more mystery and the more ambiguity, the more redemptive possibilities are visible. We sing to Jesus in this hymn, and we know he is coming. But by singing for him to come, singing about the waiting, reinforces the joy when he does come. Joy increases with the anticipation, and casting the musical phrases of this hymn with less functional chord progressions, make this anticipation stronger.
The chord progressions in Priest’s version are not the same 4 chords repeated over and over anyway. That’s the accusation classical musicians place on a lot of pop music to prove it isn’t sophisticated. True, in this version, there are just a couple basic progressions, and they are very similar to each other, but there is a little bit of variety, albeit always in a pop manner.
Marcy Priest harmonizes parts of this hymn in strange, but meaningful ways, which is to say, though the fundamental progression underlying each verse is essentially the same, there is an alteration. You can hear it at the beginning of verse 2, ‘Born thy people to deliver’. Whereas the chord underlying the beginning of verse 1 was D, the tonic chord, here she uses A, the dominant chord. The first note of the melody (the word ‘born’) is decidedly dissonant with this A chord. The next chord coincides with the first syllable of the word ‘people’, though the melody note is the same. This time the melody and chord are consonant. But the D chord—the way verse 1 is harmonized—is consonant with both notes.
Why change it? Well, the dissonant dominant A chord increases the tension, which increases the waiting and waiting. Which increases the joy
So let’s get back to the lyrics, the part that Marcy Priest cut and rearranged. I mentioned that in the original hymn, the second half of the verse, beginning with ‘Israel’s strength and consolation’, is set musically different than the first half. For one, this is the only time we have a non-authentic cadence ending a phrase. In the grand scheme of things, in classical music theory, doing something different only helps reinforce the tonic. The more we go away from the tonic, the more we appreciate resolving back to it.
So, Priest leaves the second half of the first verse out initially (and we never hear the second half of the second verse in her version). Instead, after hearing the first half of the second verse, she sings ‘Come thou long expected Jesus’ twice as the music builds, before singing the second half of verse 1. Then, finally, ‘Israel’s strength and consolation’ and the rest of verse 1. We’ve heard the 4 chords repeated here in this order, but not at the beginning of a poetic phrase. Which is to say, the same chords heard here, earlier straddle the end of one and the beginning of another poetic phrase: ‘sins release us, let us find our’.
What a trick she pulls! Just like the harmonization in the hymn, this second half of the verse is musically different, but because it’s a pop progression, it sounds inevitably the same, not functionally different as in the classical setting. And, she’s made us wait for this difference; if it happened earlier, our ears might have noticed the change and undercut the mystery.
The other aspect that makes this song unique is the bell obbligato2 only heard thus far at the very beginning and during instrumental interludes. The song continues repeating the same new 4-chord progression until the end. After the concluding text of verse 1 is sung, Priest sings “Come thou long expected Jesus” several more times, starting quiet and still, then building.
First of all, I love repeating these words so many times. In the original hymn, they are sung once. But these words so powerfully instill and solidify the essence of Advent: embodying longing, and hope to turn the waiting sorrow into all-encompassing joy. Secondly, during the build, the obbligato returns, unifying the song. As ‘Come thou long expected Jesus’ continues, Priest adds one more layer, a wonderful descant elaboration of ‘joy of every heart’.
I love that she sings on those words, here, and in this way. Here at the ending, she luxuriates in the joy. We feel like we’ve waited the whole song for it, just like we feel like we wait the entire church year for it, just like we will in actuality wait our whole lives for it. But in the microcosm of this song, she captures the whole waiting and anticipation of Advent. She gives us a glimpse of what Advent is about, of what joyful worship awaits us when we’re reunited with our savior.
I’ve played this version of Come though long expected Jesus a few times in worship bands. I listen to Marcy Priest herself sing it incessantly this time of year. I can’t prove if my analysis actually matches her intentions, but what I know is this: I generally have never enjoyed Christmas music—maybe it’s all around too happy. But the more I listen to this version of this song the more I get excited for Christmas, the season, the significance, and the music. Getting this glimpse of true, permanent joy after the agonizing wait…that’s what Advent is for.
If you don’t get the technical lingo of ‘cadence’ in this context, read on. I’ll explain it in the text in a minute.
Sorry, another technical term, meaning, to quote Miriam-Webster: “an elaborate especially melodic part accompanying a solo or principal melody and usually played by a single instrument”