O Come, O Come Emmanuel

[davidgra]

Howdy all.

I pulled out the CHRISTMAS COLLECTION today and played the remixed version of CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT for the first time in a couple of years (I am eternally thankful to have the original vinyl mix on CD, and always listen to that version rather than the remixed version).

Does the change in "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" bother anyone else? On the original, Richard sings:

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel, AND ransom captive Israel."

On the remixed CD (as well as the Time-Life Christmas collection) he sings:

"O Come, O Come Emmanuel, SHALL ransom captive Israel."

Even though I know the change is there, I still find it jarring every time I hear it. What bothers me is that the change doesn't make any sense -- it's not true to the traditional words, it doesn't make grammatical sense, and even if it was done because of some problem in the original master tape, there are other ways it could have been fixed that didn't involve transplanting a wrong word in that place.

Anyone have any insight into this one?

David

 

[Rudy]

Does anyone have a source for the original lyrics for this song?

 

[Harry]

http://www.carols.org.uk/o_come_come_emmanuel.htm

Harry

 

[Rudy]

And from there we get:

"O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel."

So in essence, Richard sort of came up with his own interpretation. Keep in mind the original is in French, and who knows what can change in the translation.

 

[davidgra]

Keep in mind that on the original CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT, the lyrics are as you printed there.

It's only on the remixed version that the lyrics change.

So why the change in the remixing?

David

 

[Geographer]

Just sang this in Church a couple weeks ago at the beginning of Advent. And the lyrics in the hymnal used "shall." I know this specifically, because when singing it I immediately thought of the "and/shall" discrepency immediatly.

My guess is that the song, not originally in English, was probably translated in both ways. As for gramatics, well, there's a lot of songs out there that don't make sense the way the are "versed" to the melody.

Sung like this:

O Come, O Come
Emmanual shall ransom Isreal

it does make sense.

Come se/Come sa, Tomato/Toe-motto

 

[engineer]

Interested discussion, but why isn't anyone addressing the question asked: Why did Richard change the song in the remix?

Since I don't know the answer, I decided to check out the other argument. I consulted with a friend of mine, who happens to be a Latin scholar. His reply:

"The first line of Veni Emmanuel should be 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.' That is a more literal translation of the Latin than using the word 'shall'. The phrase beckons Emmanuel to come - 'captivum solve Israel', and placing the word 'shall' there changes the phrase from the second person (as written in Latin) to the third person, which is not the way the text reads in Latin."

Dan

 

[engineer]

By the way, which hymnal uses "shall" in the first line? My partner plays the organ and has about 20 hymnals here in the house -- every one of them uses "and" in the first line. I'd be very curious to see the one that printed it differently.

Dan