O Holy Night

O Holy Night A MERTON CHRISTMAS CHOIR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD OXFORD PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA BENJAMIN NICHOLAS CHOIR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD O Holy Night OXFORD PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA A MERTON CHRISTMAS BENJAMIN NICHOLAS 1 All bells in paradise John Rutter (b. 1945) [4:59] 11 O holy night Adolphe Adam (1803–1856), arr. John Rutter [5:20] 2 Shepherd’s Pipe Carol John Rutter [2:52] 12 It came upon the midnight clear trad. English, arr. Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) [2:53] Alexander Little organ Descant: David Willcocks 3 Jesus Christ the apple tree Elizabeth Poston (1905–1987) [3:20] 13 The Bird of Dawning* Bob Chilcott [3:22] 4 Hark! the herald-angels sing Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) [3:28] Clare Webb soprano Alexander Little organ Descant: David Willcocks (1919–2015) 14 Away in a manger W. J. Kirkpatrick (1838–1921), [2:27] 5 The Shepherds’ Farewell Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) [4:50] arr. David Willcocks 6 Unto us is born a son trad., arr. David Willcocks [2:17] 15 In dulci jubilo trad. German, [3:13] Peter Shepherd organ arr. Robert Lucas de Pearsall (1795–1856) 7 In the bleak mid-winter Harold Darke (1888–1976) [4:25] 16 What child is this? Thomas Hewitt Jones (b. 1984) [4:21] Oliver Kelham tenor Eleanor Hicks soprano 8 The Shepherd’s Carol Bob Chilcott (b. 1955) [3:32] 17 O come, all ye faithful J. F. Wade (c.1711–1786), arr. David Willcocks [4:59] Peter Shepherd organ 9 I sing of a maiden Patrick Hadley (1899–1973) [2:25] Peter Shepherd organ 18 O magnum mysterium Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) [6:06] 10 Silent night Franz Xaver Gruber (1787–1863), arr. John Rutter [3:20] Total playing time [68:19] Recorded on 27-29 June 2016 Cover image: Fra Angelico (c.1387–1455), Join the Delphian mailing list: * premiere recording in the Chapel of Merton Annunciatory Angel (detail), 1450–1455, www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join College, Oxford gold leaf and tempera on wood panel/ Merton College, Oxford gratefully acknowledges the generous support of David Ure towards making this recording. Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter Detroit Institute of Arts/Bequest of Eleanor Like us on Facebook: 24-bit digital editing: Paul Baxter Clay Ford/Bridgeman Images www.facebook.com/delphianrecords With thanks to the Warden and Fellows of the House of Scholars of Merton College, Oxford 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Choir photography © John Cairns ‘Shepherd’s Pipe Carol’ music and words by John Rutter © Oxford University Press 1967. Words reproduced by permission. Design: John Christ Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK Follow us on Twitter: All rights reserved. ‘All bells in paradise’ music and words by John Rutter © Collegium Music Publications 2013. Exclusively licensed Booklet editor: Henry Howard www.delphianrecords.co.uk @delphianrecords worldwide to Oxford University Press. Words reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Notes on the music At once sacred and secular, pagan and Seuse, a Dominican monk, first heard the carol a well-loved carol, its origins are still the source Christ is risen today’), it was only in 1855 that Christian, a solemn song and a lively dance, one night in 1328. Sitting alone in his cell, an of much debate and uncertainty. The music the English organist William Cummings had the Christmas carol is a mongrel musical form, angel appeared and invited the monk to join in a has been attributed variously to the composers the idea of fitting the words to Mendelssohn’s a paradox of conflicting origins and ideas. The heavenly song: ‘In dulci jubilo / Nun singet und Arne, Handel, Gluck and even John IV, King of Festgesang – a melody originally composed to first carol might have been composed by the seid froh!’ The arrangement recorded here dates Portugal, while the original Latin text (‘Adeste celebrate the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg’s angels themselves, sung to the shepherds on from the nineteenth century. Robert Lucas de fideles’) may or may not have been written invention of moveable type. Finally, text and a hillside outside Bethlehem, but it was a genre Pearsall takes the simple carol and weaves it by St Bonaventure. Most probable, however, melody were in tune, forming the enduring that had a long, rough journey through field into a work of sophisticated grace, setting it for is that the carol was written in the 1740s by partnership we know today; the well-loved and street, court and even alehouse, before five solo voices and four choral parts. Melody, one John Francis Wade, a Catholic exile from descant was again supplied by David Willcocks. it would return to its sacred roots and take up rhythm, harmony are all substantially altered, yet England living in France. One thing we do formal residence in church. the strength of the carol is such that is remains know for certain though is the origin of David If ‘Hark! the herald’ represents one side of the at all times itself, despite Pearsall’s most artful Willcocks’s inspired descant – composed one nineteenth-century carol tradition – triumphant, But return it did, yielding us some of the manipulations. evening on the train home to Cambridge after a solemn, formal – then Silent night reflects loveliest and best-known tunes of the Bach Choir rehearsal in London. Borrowing the the other. Intimate and lovely, this cradle song repertoire, starting a musical tradition that That ‘In dulci jubilo’ is still so popular across chorus from ‘Ding, dong, merrily on high’, it has is a musical nativity scene, a delicate portrait continues and thrives today, even as other Europe today is largely thanks to its inclusion become as much a fixture of a contemporary of mother and child that spoke emotively to musical genres fade and falter. The carols in the Piae Cantiones – a sixteenth-century British Christmas as the original carol itself. the Victorian values of home and family. Many recorded here span almost 700 years, Finnish publication that gathered together a legends surround its composition, including beginning in the thirteenth century and number of medieval Latin hymns and songs, Hark! the herald-angels sing is another a charming tale of mice chewing through a continuing right up to the present day. Their including ‘In dulci jubilo’ and ‘Puer nobis carol with a surprisingly complicated history. church organ, forcing schoolmaster Franz Xaver musical styles may vary, but what unites nascitur’, best known to us today in Britain as Hymn books tend to attribute the text to the Gruber and priest Joseph Mohr to compose a them is a shared spirit, that sense of ‘joy and Unto us is born a son. Unlike ‘In dulci jubilo’ Methodist author Charles Wesley and the carol that could be sung to the accompaniment wonder’ that first drew the nineteenth-century however, this hearty carol with its soaring music to Mendelssohn, but the reality is rather of a guitar. Though sadly untrue, it points to the carol collector William Wallace Fyfe and so chant melody was not reworked for an English- more complicated. Wesley, so the story goes, essence of the carol’s appeal – its simplicity – a many like him to their task. speaking public in the nineteenth century, and inspired by the glorious pealing of bells of quality John Rutter’s light-touch arrangement had to wait until 1902 for its first publication Christmas day, composed verses beginning skilfully preserves. It’s joy that is uppermost in In dulci jubilo – a in the timeless translation of George Ratcliffe ‘Hark how all the welkin rings’. The archaic piece that epitomises the duality of the medieval Woodward that we hear here. ‘welkin’ (meaning heavens) and theological But if amateurs are responsible for many of the carol. The lilting, triple-time rhythm glances back complexities of the original text troubled his carols of this period, others have their origins to the Christmas carol’s origins as a carole – an Its stately melody might sound as ancient as fellow preachers, two of whom had a hand in in the professional musical world. Berlioz’s Old French dance – while the words redirect ‘Unto us’ or ‘In dulci jubilo’, but O come, all ye editing the carol to the version we know today. The Shepherds’ Farewell actually forms the music’s celebratory energy towards a faithful is in fact a much later addition to the Originally sung to the tune ‘Easter Hymn’ (best part of a much larger oratorio L’enfance du spiritual subject. Legend has it that Heinrich carol repertoire. Surprisingly though for such known now as the melody for Wesley’s ‘Jesus Christ (1854) about the childhood of Jesus, but Notes on the music this charmingly naive chorus was originally manger’. Written in 1849 by the Revd Edmund championed by Vaughan Williams, Holst and unaccompanied melody into an exquisite strophic composed with no such grand context in mind. Hamilton Sears, the former is a poignant others, and partly also perhaps by the newly carol for upper voices. Built around a simple C A musical joke between friends, the melody first statement of both hope and fear – hope for the popularised service of Nine Lessons and major triad, the melody is designed to work in appeared as Berlioz’s contribution to a friend’s redemption offered by the ‘love-song’ of the Carols pioneered at Truro Cathedral and then many textures including a round. The effect of autograph album. Subsequently performed angels, but fear that the brewing tensions that at King’s College, Cambridge. Composed in these staggered entries is of joyous, spontaneous under a pseudonym it proved a hit, inspiring the would eventually erupt into the Civil War would 1909 by Harold Darke (later acting Director creation – music that, like the God it portrays, has composer to extend it into a concert work.

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