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carols from kantos
PROGRAMME
Congregational Once in Royal David's City
Herbert Howells A Spotless Rose
Dobrinka Tabakova Alma Redemptoris Mater
John Rutter Candlelight Carol
Lucy Walker There Is No Rose
Matthew Coleridge Balulalow
Peter Warlock Bethlehem Down
Eleanor Cully Boehringer Perennial Ephemeral
Winner of Kantos Carol Competition 2023
Congregational O Little Town of Bethlehem
John Tavener Today the Virgin
INTERVAL
Spanish Trad. arr. Robin Wallington A La Nanita Nana
Thomas Adès Fayrfax Carol
Congregational Hark the Herald
Andrew Cusworth Of a Rose Synge We
Congregational Silent Night
Roxanna Panufnik Sleep, Little Jesus, Sleep
Helena Paish While Mary Slept
Congregational O Come All Ye Faithful
Morten Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium
Programme Notes
Congregational Once in Royal David's City
Soloist: Megan Rickard
Harmonised by A. H. Mann, Descant & Organ by David Willcocks
Herbert Howells A Spotless Rose
Soloist: Robin Wallington
Howells was an English composer, organist and teacher, most well-known for his great contribution to Anglican church music. A Spotless Rose is one of a set of Three Carol-Anthems written in 1919 and is a tender depiction of Jesus’ birth and the purity of Mary. The text is an anonymous fifteenth-century poem. Christopher Palmer recorded a conversation with the composer: 'This [A Spotless Rose] I set down and wrote after idly watching some shunting from the window of a cottage....which overlooked the Midland Railway [in Gloucester]. In an upstairs room I looked out on iron railings and the main Bristol to 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 final cadence, with the words ‘on a cold winter’s night’, is a moment of Howells’ true harmonic genius; in fact, the composer Patrick Hadley famously wrote to Howells saying ‘I should like, when my time comes, to pass away with that magical cadence.’
Dobrinka Tabakova Alma Redemptoris Mater
Like the resonance left after the ringing of large bells, the opening triad becomes the background in this antiphon. The triad lingers, then other triads are juxtaposed in dissonance, only for the initial sound to prevail. On the background of this triad haze, an original Alma Redemptoris Mater Gregorian chant emerges. The work is the transition between this initial state and a re-imagined chant, which gradually takes over at the end of the piece, as if mirroring the opening.
This Marion Antiphon was commissioned by Merton College, Oxford to form part of the Merton Choirbook which celebrates the College’s 750th anniversary.
John Rutter Candlelight Carol
Inspired by Geertgen's painting Nativity at Night,Candlelight Carol centres around the love of a mother on that first night in the stable.
Lucy Walker There Is No Rose
Soloist: Megan Rickard
Lucy Walker's thoughtful setting of There is no rose flows between swells of emotion and warm chromatic inflections in the Latin refrains.
Matthew Coleridge Balulalow
‘A gentle lullaby to the Christ-child, Balulalow was one of my earliest a cappella compositions, a companion piece to my setting of the Corpus Christi Carol, both written in the summer of 2011. I was trying to find harmonic language that sounded both modern and medieval at the same time. The piece has a restless, dreamlike quality; the unresolved cadences and gentle dissonance suggestive of an infant who isn’t quite asleep, but also not fully awake. The text, in Scots dialect, is from the 16th century collection “The Gude and Godlie Ballatis” by brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn.’
Peter Warlock Bethlehem Down
Bethlehem Down was composed in 1927 by British composer Peter Warlock, the pseudonym of Philip Arnold Heseltine. It is set to a poem written by journalist and poet Bruce Blunt. Warlock and Blunt wrote the carol to finance a big night of drinking over Christmas in 1927. The pair submitted the carol to The Daily Telegraph's annual Christmas carol competition and won. The four verse piece is characterised by modal harmony with chromatic inflections.
Eleanor Cully Boehringer Perennial Ephemeral
Winner of Kantos Carol Competition 2023
Soloists: Sarah Keirle & Robin Morton
‘I started composing this piece last winter, around the time a friend of mine was preparing to get married. She wanted everything decorated in evergreens and berries and to have Christmas carols in the service. I had suggested 'The Holly and the Ivy' and began to imagine an arrangement for double choir: with one choir singing the word 'holly' beneath the word 'ivy' in the other, sustaining these beneath fragments of the tune. I loved the idea of a juxtaposition between these evergreens and the ephemerality of a wedding day. I wrote a song about this, likening a bride to a blossom flower that opens for just twenty-four hours. Part of my song appears in the middle of this arrangement of 'The Holly and the Ivy', which evolves along with the flora in the verses of the carol.’
Eleanor is an artist and composer from Norwich, based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She makes performances, compositions, installations and music. Eleanor has written for various artists and ensembles and had her music broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and on Resonance FM. She has had work performed by choirs including Musarc and Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia and has collaborated with ensembles, community groups, young people, visual artists and galleries. Envisaging the relationship between her work and its surroundings, Eleanor often seeks ways of framing and enhancing the listening environment in iterations of her work.
www.eleanorcully.co.uk/artist-statement
Congregational O Little Town of Bethlehem
arr. Ralph Vaughan Williams & Thomas Armstrong
John Tavener Today the Virgin
Tavener’s Today the Virgin takes its inspiration from the Medieval folk-carol, with a text by Mother Thekla (Abbess at Normanby). It has a rolling refrain on the word Alleluia, which gradually increases by one fragment on each statement.
Spanish Trad. arr. Robin Wallington A La Nanita Nana
Soloists: Charlotte Laidlaw & Robin Morton
‘A La Nanita Nana’ has become one of the most popular Christmas time lullabies in the Hispanic world. Originally written in 1904 by José Ramón Gomis, it has entered the repertory of modern folk song worldwide, inspiring performances ranging from symphony orchestras to The Cheetah Girls. In this version, the hypnotic rocking of the cradle combines with the bravura of flamenco rhythms for a truly Iberian lullaby.
Thomas Adès Fayrfax Carol
The Fayrfax Carol was commissioned by the Chapel Choir of King’s College, Cambridge for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, 1997. Subtle and lyrical yet with pointed, bitter-sweet harmonies, it also looks ahead to Christ’s Passion.
Congregational Hark the Herald
Mendelssohn, Descant & Organ by David Willcocks
Andrew Cusworth Of a Rose Synge We
‘Of a rose synge we’ was written in 2013 as part of Andrew’s residency for the chamber choir, Concanenda. The text is taken from the Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden B. 26 manuscript, where it appears alongside a number of other musical settings and other, more miscellaneous materials. Like its more famous relative, There is no rose; this is verse-burden text that explores the image of a flowering rose as a metaphor for the virgin Mary and the nativity. The form of the carol has been preserved as an echo of its archaic nature, and its burden set to a two-note motif reminiscent of both chant and bells. For the most part, the carol is written with a tightly restricted harmonic vocabulary; however, it blossoms into something more richly coloured and tonally ambiguous as the text turns to the purpose of Christ’s birth - ‘to save mankynde that was forlore and us alle from synnes sore’ - before returning to its gravitational centre of D major, and fading away in order to end as it began.
Congregational Silent Night
Franz Xaver Gruber arr. Alexander Kyle
Roxanna Panufnik Sleep, Little Jesus, Sleep
Soloist: Sarah Keirle
Panufnik’s Sleep, Little Jesus, Sleep is an arrangement of a traditional Polish Christmas Carol, Lulajze Jezuniu, for solo soprano, choir and organ.
Helena Paish While Mary Slept
Soloist: Lindsey James
Paish sets a text by Alice Archer Sewall (1870-1955) that describes Jesus comforting his sleeping mother, both as a baby, at his birth, and in preparation for his crucifixion. A weeping-like repetitive ‘Ah’ melody rolls around as the text is delivered by different sections of the choir and a soprano soloist.
Congregational O Come All Ye Faithful
Composer unknown, arranged by David Willcocks
Morten Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium
This setting of O magnum mysterium, written in 1994, is probably Lauridsen’s most well-known composition. It has rich indulgent harmonic progressions and sustained vocal lines. The climax introduces the text ‘Alleluia’ and arrives at the culmination of one long journey (since the very beginning of the piece) of getting gradually louder.
THE CHOIR
SOPRANOS
Madeline Claire de Berrié
Lindsey James
Sarah Keirle
Charlotte Laidlaw
Megan Rickard
ALTOS
Charlotte Galloway
Rachel Gilmore
Ellen Griffiths
Joseph Judge
TENORS
Alexander Kyle
Robin Morton
Robin Wallington
BASS
Jonathan Ainscough
Damian O’Keeffe
Henry Page
Matthew Secombe
ORGAN
George Herbert
THE TEAM
Artistic Director Ellie Slorach
General Director Claire Shercliff
Communications Coordinator Eve Powers
Design Sam Gee
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