Ceremony of Carols: "Balulalow" - Benjamin Britten
Pastorale on "Forest Green" - Richard I. Purvis
A Rush of Wings - Gilbert M. Martin
Messiah: "Every Valley" - G.F. Handel
Mass in c minor: "Laudamus Te" - W.A. Mozart
Christmas: "Finale" - Gaston Dethier
Hymns: #83 Adeste Fidelis, #109 The First Nowell,
#87 Mendelssohn
The music for the Christmas Eve service draws from a number
of traditions and time periods. The choir’s selections are firmly entrenched in
Traditional 20th century choral literature. The postlude is a flashy
finale to the service based on the opening hymn and the prelude(s) range from traditional
arias to lesser known organ works based on familiar carols.
My background is not in liturgical music. I was raised in a
Pentecostal church where I never heard of Advent and we rarely (usually only
the Sunday before Christmas) sang carols. Then I took jobs in Methodist and
Baptist churches and had to learn about this “Advent” business. In the churches
that I served it basically amounted to spending an extra few minutes lighting a
candle and singing some Christmas carols. This notion of waiting to sing and
play carols until Christmas Eve is foreign to me and I will say that the
waiting really makes me want to get as many in as I can.
During the prelude I will play Richard I. Purvis’s (1913-1994)
setting of Forest Green. Purvis
served as the Organist/Choirmaster at Grace Cathedral from 1947-1971. After studying
at the Curtis Institute Purvis enlisted in the army as a Bandmaster. He was
taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge and spent the rest of the war in
a prison camp. He is primarily remembered for his colorful, light compositions
and arrangements of familiar tunes.
I will again play variations from John McCreary’s Canonic Variations on “Divinum Mysterium” (See
posting for Advent 1 for notes on this piece.) as well as Gilbert M. Martin’s
(b.1941) setting of Regent Square
entitled A Rush of Wings. Martin is a
composer and arranger. A graduate of Westminster Choir College, he has received
several awards for his compositions and travels around the country as a
clinician and conductor.
In addition to the organ offerings during the prelude we
will hear Every Valley from Messiah. This prophecy foretelling the
coming of the Christ child has always held a disconnect between the text and
the tune for me. The dark, angular, minor overture gives way to the gentle,
bright Comfort Ye which breaks
joyfully into this aria. It seems like the events that the tenor is singing about
would be difficult and painful, violent even but they are presented with great
joy. Laudamus te is taken from the
W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) Grand Mass in c minor K. 427, which remained unfinished
(most likely due to events in Mozart’s life surrounding the death of a child
and his departure from Salzburg. The mass was written for his wife Constanze
and received its first performance in 1783. This performance probably featured
a version which included borrowings from his other mass settings to complete
the piece. It’s message is simple, praise. Just praise.
The postlude is the last portion of Christmas by Gaston Dethier (1875-1958). Dethier was a Belgian born
American organist. He served on the faculty of Julliard from 1907-1945. This
setting of Adeste Fideles features
the melody played in large chords in the manuals over quick scalar passages in
the pedal. The piece ends with a pedal cadenza finishing with a whole lot of “a”
played on full organ.
As I said as the outset, the choir’s selections are thoroughly
British. The communion anthem is the haunting lullaby Balulalow from Benjamin Britten’s (1913-1976) Op. 28 Ceremony of Carols. This work was
composed in 1942 while Britten and longtime friend Peter Pears were crossing
the Atlantic on a trip from the US back to England. Britten had brought along
two technical manuals on the harp to read as research for a harp concerto that
he planned to write so it is likely that this explains his choice of the harp
as accompaniment for the work. The piece was originally scored for three part
treble voices and (perhaps at the urging of his publisher) was rescored for
four part adult voices. The text is based on an English translation of the
Martin Luther hymn Vom Himmel Hoch. This
translation was published in the 1567 collection Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs collected out of
sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other Ballates changed out of prophaine
sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie, with augmentation of sundrie gude
and godlie Ballates not contenit in the first editioun. The brothers
Wedderburn (James[1495-1553] John[1505-1556] and Robert[1510-1555-60]) were all
charged with heresy and spent a period of time in exile. This setting of Balulalow (a Scottish word which means
lullaby) features a gentle rocking accompaniment supporting the opening soprano
solo. The full choir comes in for the second verse before the soprano soloist
reenters on the last line with the choir trading off the rocking figure of the
accompaniment with alternating major and minor figures.
Fantasia on Christmas
Carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was first performed in 1912 as
part of the Three Choirs Festival. Vaughan Williams wrote a great deal of
music, all of which sounds very British. He was very interested in the folk
tunes of his homeland. Many of the tunes that he collected became the basis for
his compositions. This work opens with a setting of “The truth sent from above,”
an anonymous folk carol collected by Cecil Sharp (1859-1924) in the
Herefordshire region of England. The work opens with a solo cello followed by
the baritone soloist underscored by the choir humming. The tonality changes
from minor to major with the entrance of the choir on “Come all you worthy
gentlemen” passed back and forth between the men and women of the choir. The
next section features the baritone soloist and the sopranos of the choir
trading lines on the hymn “On Christmas Night.” The piece continues with
snippets of “The First Noel,” “There is a Fountain,” “The Virgin Unspotted,”
and “The Wassail Bough” all scattered throughout, some appearing only briefly in
the accompaniment. The work takes the listener from the creation story to the
virgin birth and hope for the future. This is not the final time Vaughan Williams
looked to the Christmas season for inspiration. His cantata Hodie was written in 1954 and dedicated
to Herbert Howells. The Fantasia is
still frequently performed and is a chance to showcase the beautiful English
folk tunes that are set in this work.
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