From the Organist & Choirmaster
As Advent comes to a close and we prepare to welcome the season of Christmas and the birth of the Savior of the World, Jesus Christ, I wanted to share some details of the music you will hear on Christmas Eve at both the 10:00 pm Lessons & Carols and the 10:30 pm High Mass of the Nativity.
Lessons & Carols will include the following carols:
Adam lay ybounden by Boris Ord
This beloved carol takes an anonymous 15th-century Middle English text from the Sloane Manuscript celebrating the theological paradox of Adam’s ‘happy fault',’ that led to humanity’s redemption through Mary and Jesus, describing Adam’s long wait in limbo and rejoicing that the apple’s taking allowed Mary to become Queen of Heaven.
A Spotless Rose by Herbert Howells
(Forgive my description of this carol, — Howells is a favorite of mine.) “Lo! how a rose e’er blooming” is a hymn well-known to many. The carol uses the first two verses, translated by the British translator Catherine Winkworth, and was set to music in 1919 by Howells. Howells’ stated that “I sat down and wrote A Spotless Rose…after idly watching some shunting from the window of a cottage in Gloucester which overlooked the Midland Railway. In an upstairs room I look out on iron railings and the main Bristol Gloucester railway line, with shunting trucks bumping and banging. I wrote it and dedicated to my mother - it always moves me when I hear it, just as if it were written by someone else.” The Harold is through-composed and switches between 7/8-, 5/4-, and 5/8-time signatures, which was unconventional of the time. The final cadence, with its multiple suspensions, is wonderful. No one dared to compose another setting until Philip Ledger’s new setting in 2002.
Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree by Elizabeth Boston
Composed in 1967 by British composer Elizabeth Boston, this is probably the best-known setting of the 18th-century text. It begins with a single-line melody with each verse adding one or more lines of harmony which gives the lines a pulsating feeling of gently louder, then softer, drama.
Joy’s Seven by Stephen Cleobury
This festive carol celebrates the happiness of Mary at particular moments in Jesus’ life, most likely inspired by the Seven Joys of the Virgin in the devotional literature and art of Medieval Europe. Though it isn’t traditionally associated with Christmas, in the modern era, it has been. The seven joys being: (1) being born, (2) to make the lame to go, (3) to make the blind to see, (4) to read the Bible o’er (not the entire Bible of course, just what Jesus was reading in the Temple and would become the Old Testament), (5) to bring the dead alive, (6) to see him on the crucifix, and (7) to wear the crown of heaven.