12/09/2025
PROGRAM - Ceremony of Carols
Carol of the Bells uses the original melody from Shchedryk, (Bountiful Evening), a Ukraninian shchedrivka, or New Year’s song, written in 1914 by Ukranian composer Mykola Leontovych.
Iam sol recedit is the second of a pair of pieces Ola Gjeilo composed using the text from a traditional Latin Vespers hymn, O Lux Beata Trinitas (O Trinity of Blessed Light
L’adieu des bergers a la Sainte Famille (The Shepherds’ Farewell to the Holy Family) is from Hector Berlioz’s oratorio L’enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), telling a story of Jesus’ family leaving for Egypt.
Un Flambeau, Jeanneatte, Isabelle is a setting for a text by the nineteenth century French poet and playwright Émile Blémont. He set the lyrics to a fourteenth century dance tune by Marc-Antoine Charpentier written for a play by Molière.
Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming, whose roots are from an unknown German author, first appeared in print in 1599 and has since been published with a varying number of verses and in several translations.
Three Nativity Carols by Stephen Paulus was an American Grammy Award winning composer of operas and choral music. His style is tonal and melodic, harking back to the Romantic Period of music.
The first of the three carols, The Holly and the Ivy, is a traditional British folk carol dating back to the early nineteenth century, though the connection of holly to Christmas dates back to medieval times.
This Endris Night is also an anonymous British Christmas carol, but from the fifteenth century. For a medieval poem of this time period, it has an unusual delicateness and lyrical embellishment.
Paulus chose another medieval poem from the fifteenth century, Wonder Tidings, as the final carol in this set. The anonymous poet chose elaborate language to describe an impact of the simple story of the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.
A Hymn to the Virgin was written by Benjamin Britten when he was sixteen years old while attending boarding school.
A Ceremony of Carols is a choral composition for Christmas by Benjamin Britten, an English composer, conductor and pianist in the mid-twentieth century
The Procession is a Gregorian antiphon to the Magnificat at Second Vespers of Christmas. It is written with no time signature and is sung exclusively by the sopranos.
Wolcum Yole! is an upbeat and festive piece looking toward multiple upcoming important religious days and displaying the juxtaposition of the past and present – timelessness and time – as was shown in the medieval imagery of the mandorla.
There is No Rose, a text kept at Trinity College and dating to the early fifteenth century, has a different tone from the previous movement, extolling the beauty of the birth of Jesus.
As dew in Aprille, again with text written in the early fifteenth century, switches the focus from the baby to the mother.
This Little Babe from Robert Southwell’s Newe Heaven, Newe Warre [War] from 1595. There is a battle between the baby and Satan heard in polyrhythms.
In Freezing Winter Night, with text also by Southwell, we are brought back to the circumstances around the baby’s birth.
Based on a 16th century text by William Cornish, Spring Carol is a duet of two sopranos painting a picture of the beginnings of spring.
Adam lay i-bounden, Deo Gracias recounts the events in the “Fall of Man” story in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis when Eve is tricked into eating the forbidden fruit.
Britten chose to conclude the piece with the Recession, the same chant that introduced it. We end where we began, but with new images and interpretations brought to mind after
