It will be easy to find a recording of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” You may already have a favorite.
I suggest listening to this talk first. Malcolm Guite “Waiting on the Word” The word “riches” comes to mind as I hear this - treasures hidden in plain sight in words I’ve sung for most of my life.
You can follow Malcolm Guite’s blog and read the poems from his Advent book Waiting on the Word without purchasing the book. You get the added benefit of seeing an artist’s interpretation of each poem. I enjoyed reading the blog this year; next year I intend to buy the book and enjoy Malcolm’s commentary on each poem.
My friends and I recorded “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (Track 1) a little over twenty years ago, and I don’t thing any of us understood the beauty, depth, and cleverness of the historic O Antiphons. If we had, we would have sung all the verses and put this “riddle” in the program.
From Malcolm Guite’s blog:
Now, standing on the brink of Christmas Eve, looking back at the illuminated capital letters for each of the seven titles of Christ we would see an answer to our pleas : ERO CRAS the latin words meaning ‘Tomorrow I will come!”
O Emmanuel
O Rex
O Oriens
O Clavis
O Radix
O Adonai
O Sapientia
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