Doing a paper on early Christmas carols of the Medieval and Renaissance periods..
I am at a loss of what angle to approach it from and whether I should focus on certain composers, or a few My interest are as follows:
Medieval Carols
Renaissance Carols
Christian Church
Choirs
Choral Technique
Theory
Text and Music relationship
Historical basis
Legend, Myth
Performance practice
Choral Performance Practices in Medieval Church
The Singing Voice in The Medieval Church and the decline of boys in the modern church the Christmas carol as we know it today didn't come around till the 1840's or so. Until that time, it was strictly church music.
If your German is up to it, there is a curios compendium by Helmut Loos, entitled Weihnachten in der Musik, who does a fairly thorough study of it.
Gudrun Schr枚der Verlag ISBN 3-926196-15-7
You'll most likely find itin the music library of your university, and nowhere else.
For English carols, go back to the Oxford Collection. they will give more information for your time frames in England.
You have too many themes to put all in one paper. Try and narrow it down to 3 or 4 at the most, so you can do a thorough job of it.
Best wishes How much research do you already have?
The chances that you'll be have specific composers' names on Medieval Christmas carols are pretty slim. If there are one or two major, documented composers from that time who contributed to the Christmas canon, use them. If you can't nail down enough works by a specific person or two, focus on a handful of particular carols.
Is it just carols, or could you look at church music, also? Church music is much better documented during the Medieval and Renaissance period, since monks were pretty much the only ones who knew how to write music down! Can't help that much, but I know that at one point there was a fairly large site on the internet that had like hundreds of traditional folk songs and christmas carols from lots of different cultures. It had sound files of each one. It might help give you a good idea of what you're looking at. Good luck finding it. I would google "folk songs and christmas carols MIDI" or something like that | 