Britten: A Ceremony of Carols

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The Ceremony of Carols is one of Britten’s best-known and most-performed works. It is a brilliantly conceived and dramatic concert work which sees the voices process to their places singing unaccompanied plainsong and, at the end, processing out again to the same chant. These movements can also be accompanied but strictly only if the voices do not process. The final Alleluia can be repeated as many times as necessary to get the singers to and from their destination. It begins with the Latin “Hodie Christus natus est,” sung in unison and unaccompanied as the processional. That is followed by several poems from the Middle Ages that Britten chose to tell the Christmas story, one of which is “Balulalow,” a lullaby with text from the 16th century. Halfway through the cantata, the harp solo “Interlude” not only unifies the entire work by including themes from various movements but also displays the versatility of the harp. After the harp solo, the choir continues with the dissonant “In freezing winter night,” the lighthearted “Spring Carol,” and the joyful “Deo Gracias.” The recessional is the same Latin text that was sung as a processional, “Hodie Christus natus est.”

A Ceremony of Carols sets nine medieval and 16th-century poems between the 'Hodie' of the plainsong Vespers. The sole accompanying instrument is a harp, but given the right acoustic, sensitive attention to the words and fine rhythmic control the piece has a remarkable richness and depth. The Westminster Cathedral Choir performs this work beautifully; diction is immaculate and the acoustic halo surrounding the voices gives a festive glow to the performance. This instrumental movement is a harp solo, creating a sense of angelic bliss with its slow tempo, shifting rhythm, and progressively soft nature. Britten and Pears boarded the Swedish cargo ship Axel Johnson in March 1942 to return to England. The voyage was dangerous with Nazi submarines inhabiting the Atlantic but the composer completed two choral works during the crossing: Hymn to St. Cecilia and A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28. His “carols” work is approximately 22 minutes long.

Performances by: Britten, Benjamin

A Ceremony of Carols is for three lines of either boy trebles or female sopranos, plus a harp. Britten originally scored it for women’s voices, but then had second thoughts after the debut performance in December 1942. The revised, and published, version was first sung by the Morriston Boys’ Choir the following Christmas.

Britten was born November 22, 1913, in Lowestoft, a fishing port on England’s east coast. He was the youngest of four children and the only one who showed any interest in classical music. His father was a dentist and his mother was an amateur musician who was active in the local choral society and held music gatherings in the home. She was also his first piano teacher. The original 1942 publication was written for SSA ( soprano, soprano, alto) children's choir. In 1943, a SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) arrangement was published for a mixed choir. Many of the movements are written as rounds or call-and-response pieces – lyrically simple for the sake of the children performing. There are three-part divisi in both the tenor and bass parts. Each of these lines individually mirrors a line in either the soprano or alto parts, as though the tenor and bass sections are a men's choir singing the original SSA composition with an SSA choir. [1] Movements [ edit ] 1. Procession "Hodie Christus natus est" [ edit ] The carols are for three-part children’s voices (though, of course they can be sung by female adults as well) and they form a two-part work around a central Interlude for harp which is based on the plainsong from the Procession. Variety is the key word here as all the carols have such individual identities. The forthright Wolcum Yole!, the deliciously lyrical There is no Rose, the swinging Balulalow, the fiery and dramatic This little Babe all contribute to a work which is a feast of discovery throughout. Lovely solos and duos add further colour and the harp part, an inspired choice of accompaniment, enriches, colours and surrounds the voices with its pictorial musical imagery. If anything shows Britten’s genius for writing for voices it must be this work. The challenges here are in creating a real equality between voice parts, fielding a confident pair of soloists, and making the most of the wonderfully colourful poems Britten has chosen to set. Pronunciation is not really an issue, but when I recorded this work with the Finzi Singers I decided to follow the example of Sacred and Profane and use authentic medieval pronunciation for which an expert coach was necessary. It brings an added element of colour to a familiar aural experience. The composition draft was finished on 8 January 1948, but Britten then put the music aside while he embarked on his realization of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera—first performed in Cambridge on 24 May—and it was not until 31 May that he was able to complete the cantata’s orchestration, less than a week before the first performance.

Broadcast

Britten composed the music at the same time as the Hymn to St. Cecilia and in similar style. Originally conceived as a series of unrelated songs, it was later unified into one piece with the framing processional and recessional chant in unison based on the Gregorian antiphon "Hodie Christus natus est". A harp solo based on the chant, along with a few other motifs from "Wolcum Yole", also serves to unify the composition. In addition, the movements "This Little Babe" and "Deo Gracias" have the choir reflecting harp-like effects by employing a canon at the first in stretto. After he graduated, he accepted a position with the General Post Office Film Unit composing scores for documentary films. He experimented with different combinations of instruments to achieve the widest range of musical expression from small ensembles. During this time, he also composed music for motion pictures as well as incidental music for plays and radio programs. By the late 1930s, Britten had become one of England’s most promising composers of his time. Originally for three-part treble chorus, solo voices, and harp. Later arranged for soprano, alto, tenor, bass

A review published in The Times following the Lancing premiere declared that Saint Nicolas‘testified yet again to the composer’s genius for securing the most telling effects by the simplest of means’. Other critics found the work patchy, and rather too occasional in nature, with one venturing to suggest that ‘at some moments the naivety sounded assumed rather than spontaneous’. But the piece was an instant success with the public, and typified Britten’s unique ability to bring together amateur performers and even the audience (via the means of collective hymn-singing) into a coherent musico-dramatic experience with widespread popular appeal. Many further performances followed: on 6 December 1948 (St Nicolas’s Day), for example, it was conducted by Britten in Amsterdam with local Dutch forces, and was then revived at the second Aldeburgh Festival in 1949. In November that year it was heard in Los Angeles while Britten and Pears were on an extended concert tour of the United States. Stravinsky, then resident in LA and always a grudging commentator on Britten’s creative work, wrote to Nicolas Nabokov on 15 December: ‘All week here I’ve listened to Aunt Britten and Uncle Pears […] Britten himself makes quite a favourable impression, and he is very popular with the public. He undoubtedly has talent as a performer, especially at the piano.’ Britten had asked Eric Crozier to collaborate with him on the cantata. Crozier had recently provided him with a substantial libretto for his comic opera Albert Herring, first performed at Glyndebourne in June 1947, but he found the task of originating a text for the new work more of an uphill struggle. In September 1947 Britten gave him Haydn’s Creation to serve as a useful model of the kind of piece he had in mind, and the Saint Nicolas text was completed in draft form in November (though rewriting was later required). Britten began composing the music before Christmas, writing to Pears on 18 December: I am beginning St Nicolas, & enjoying it hugely. It’ll be difficult to write, because that mixture of subtlety & simplicity is most extending, but very interesting […] I think St Michael’s [choir] will have to be relegated to the galleries (where anyhow all girls should be in Church), because they are obviously the most efficient, & their breathy voices are obviously most suited to the wind noises & so forth.

sees the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth and Hyperion starts celebrating early with this disc of two of the composer’s most popular choral works, both with a Christmas relevance.

To discuss the enduring appeal of the music and the spiritual meaning of 'A Ceremony of Carols', Ernie Rea is joined by a distinguished trio of musicians. Michael Berkeley is a composer, broadcaster, and crossbench peer. Benjamin Britten was his godfather. Anna Lapwood is a conductor, organist and Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She was a professional harp player. And the Rev Lucy Winkett is Rector of St James Piccadilly in the centre of London. Before becoming a priest, she trained as a singer at the Royal College of Music.His formal music education included private lessons in composition, piano, and viola. From 1930 to 1933, he studied at the Royal College of Music in London. While he was a student, his compositions began to get important recognition. One of them was his first Christmas choral work, A Boy was Born, written in 1933 for the BBC Singers. In the summer of 1943, Britten added a further carol to the set (‘That yongë child’), along with a new Interlude for solo harp, and his preference for boys’ voices was now strengthened by several memorable performances of the work in the run-up to Christmas. Britten wrote to Elizabeth Mayer on 8 December: [the carols] have had a series of thrilling shows by a choir of little Welsh boys (from a school in the poorest part of Swansea) and a great Russian harpist, Maria Korchinska. This has meant many journeys to Wales to rehearse, & then they all (35!) came up to town & sang the piece many times, & to record it […] People seem to love the piece, & altho’ it has been only printed about a month, the 1st edition is just on sold out.