A very good year

The year 1951 is notable for three reasons:

1. Michael Rennie starred as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still
   

   <parenthesis>
   (which featured an early appearance  of an autonomous bot: in the last reel, Klaatu issues a four-word command to the robot Gort, who [or which?] spends the next 10 minutes doing all sorts of clever stuff. Four words! And the first of the four is 'Gort' – the 'wake-up' word, like 'Siri' or 'Alexa'..
   </parenthesis>

2.  My choir was founded.
   

   

   You've just missed this (it was last night, as I type)
   but you're welcome to join us on any Thursday.
   
   

   
   
   


3. I was founded (or, to use the more usual verb, born) as recounted here.

Our first concert in this anniversary year is at our usual home, the lovely All Saints, Wokingham, on 7 November at 7.30, featuring the rarely-performed gem, Stanford's Mass in G (with the generous support of the Stanford Society).

The programme also includes Rutter's setting of the Magnificat.  John Rutter is often referred to as 'Mr Christmas'. And although there is nothing particularly Christmassy about the prayer (except that it is often mentioned at the beginning of the Christmas story) in this setting Rutter breaks up the well-known prayer...

<autobiographical note>
which I have sung in many settings, starting in 1971 – or maybe 1972 but certainly no later, as after my first year I was de-choired (dechorated?) for lack of sight-reading – with Stanford's in Bb, giving the concert a pleasing balance in my mind.
</autobiographical note>

... with the Middle English Christmas Carol Of a rose, a lovely Rose. 

<tangent subject="Unfamiliar words">
If you follow that link, you will find a very obscure (uncompromisingly scholarly) text.  But the OUP text has been sensitively modernized, so that only one word, 'bote', needs a footnote. Like all such one-word 'translations' it doesn't satisfy the pedant in me...

<meta-tangent >
The  Legal section of The Free Dictionary (best I can do without paying to get past the OED's paywall, and don't get me started on that –  Dominus illuminatio mea, harumph) defines it as 'A recompense, satisfaction, amends, profit or advantage : hence came the word man-bote, denoting a compensation for a man slain; house-bote, cart-bote, plough-bote, signify that a tenant is privileged to cut wood for these uses'   

Another free source says of its etymology '

Learned borrowing from Middle English bōte (“advantage, benefit, profit; relief, salvation; atonement, amends, expiation; cure”), from Old English bōt (“help, relief, advantage, remedy; compensation for an injury or wrong; (peace) offering, recompense, amends, atonement, reformation, penance, repentance”)...

It's tempting  – but probably naïve (as I know next to nothing about the pronunciation of Middle English) –  to surmise that its use in a Christian context was influenced by a punning coincidence with Noah's Ark and the many other boats (mostly on the Sea if Galilee as  I recall from a godlier youth) mentioned in the bible stories.

<meta-tangent>

...,  but it'll do!     

<tangent>   

Anyway, don't miss the concert.

b 

PS Whenever I sing a Magnificat in Latin I'm struck by the frequent confusion between the words exultare and exaltare. The meanings are very different but the pronunciations are often confused, as I discussed here: My Soul Doth Magnify the Problem