Gabriel's Message has an unusual history: while it is based on a Basque carol (Birjina gaztettobat zegoen), its melody and words may actually have roots in the thirteenth or fourteenth century hymn Angelus Ad Virginem. At any rate, the Basque carol was copied down by French composer and musicologist Charles Bordes, who published it in an 1895 volume of Basque folk tunes. The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, best known for his hymn Onward Christian Soldiers and author of more than 100 books, took some liberties in translating the text and produced one of the world's better-known Christmas carols. The melody has a stately, yet angelic quality about it, having a more purely spiritual character than most of the perkier, more commercially fit Christmas carols. The theme has an almost ecstatic glow and seems quite the perfect match for its text about Mary and the angel Gabriel, about whose appearance to her ("His wings as drifted snow/His eyes as flame") Baring-Gould describes with some of his most striking poetry. This is a fine Christmas carol that, while well known, is not among the more commonly heard ones today.

© Robert Cummings, Rovi