Light On Dark Water

Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols

Though this is one of my favorite Christmas works, I hadn't heard it for five or six years. This year I'd been thinking about it, but didn't have a chance to hear it until a couple of days after Christmas, and then I listened to it twice in as many days. As we're still in Christmastide, it's not too late for you to listen to it while it's seasonally appropriate.

It's a glorious work, one I've been fond of since I acquired this recording somewhere ca. 1970. 

Britten-VaughanWilliams-CeremonyOfCarols-MassInGMinor

It's a setting of mostly medieval, mostly Christmas-themed texts, scored for harp and a small choir. Originally the choir was meant to be for "treble" voices, to be performed by children–a boys' choir, in my recording. It's a glistening sound palette that inevitably, given the subject, sounds wintry. But the mood is far from chilly. Britten also produced a version for mixed choir. I haven't heard it, but would like to.

The choir in this performance consists of boys and girls. They're charming though a little distracting to watch. A group called The Tewkesbury Choral Society has thoughtfully provided an online version of the texts, which really helps a lot. Though they're more or less intelligible to the eye, they're somewhat less so to the ear: you can probably guess what "wolcom yole" means when  you read it (in the context of Christmas), but you might not get it from hearing alone. At least I wouldn't. 

Maclin Horton
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11 responses to “Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols”

  1. Rob G

    Same here — I like the piece very much but haven’t listened to it in several years. Will have to make time to do so. I have it on a 90’s CD by the Westminster Cathedral Choir, and it includes some other Britten sacred works.
    Got Ola Gjeilo’s “Winter Songs” CD as a present this year and while I’ve only listened to it once so far, it’s a lovely record featuring both Gjeilo’s own compositions and his arrangements of some classic Christmas carols. This is the first new Christmas music I’ve acquired in several years. Last year I bought a couple LP’s recalled from my childhood, one by Mitch Miller, the other by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. The former is fairly standard choral Christmas fare, but the latter is more interesting, featuring some spirituals and less common carols. I remembered quite a few of these, even after not having heard them in almost half a century. Amazing how the mind works.

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  2. Mac

    This was the first time I’ve ever listened to it with the texts at hand, which means that in the past I only vaguely understood that there was a Christmas theme. That made a difference, especially with the two Robert Southwell poems.
    I don’t recall having heard of Ola Gjeilo before. I find those old ’50s-’60s Christmas records a little too much on the cheesy side, but I am sentimentally attached to a couple of Sinatra’s.

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  3. Rob G

    First of all, Happy New Year, Mac, and the rest of the readers as well!
    Gjeilo is a Norwegian pianist and composer now living in New York, I think. He’s in his 40’s, and has done both piano and choral recordings. He’s done a setting of the Mass but I haven’t heard it.
    Here’s a favorite of mine. If you like this you’ll like the rest:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdgMuFN__Dc

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  4. Mac

    Lovely. And Happy New Year to you, and everybody.

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  5. Craig

    I love the “Ceremony of Carols”. I listen to it every year as part of my Christmas observance.
    Rob, you mentioned that you have a recordings from the 90s by the Westminster Cathedral Choir. Is it this one? I ask because it’s the right choir, but from the 80s. Anyway, that’s my favourite recording of the piece. Beautiful atmosphere.

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  6. Rob G

    Yes, Craig — that’s the one. I think I assumed it was 90’s because that’s when I bought it.
    I have a lot of choral music on the Hyperion label. They seem to really know what they’re doing when recording that sort of thing. They’re very good at chamber music as well.

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  7. Craig

    For sure. Hyperion is one of the best labels out there. Great artists and great sound (and great documentation — their website is a wonderful resource for learning about music). The label was bought last year, I believe, by one of the big conglomerates, so I’m somewhat concerned that the quality will decline.

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  8. Rob G

    Sat down and listened to “A Ceremony…” last evening, following along with the words in the CD insert. Although it’s been several years since I last heard it I remembered the music very well, but it was enlightening to read the words too, something which I most likely hadn’t done since I first got the CD 25+ years ago. Those old carols definitely had some meat on their lyrical bones, unlike a lot of today’s Christmas music which, as a recent meme put it, has devolved to “Snow is nice.”

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  9. Mac

    Grr. That’s one of my many don’t-get-me-started triggers–“Christmas” songs that don’t actually have anything to do with Christmas. There’s an article that appeared sometime in the past couple of weeks about Christmas songs written by Jews. I’m happy to honor Irving Berlin for the beautiful “White Christmas,” but the first song on the list is “Let It Snow,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas. Neither does “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” also on the list.
    That always bothered me a bit when I was growing up. It hit me one day that “Winter Wonderland” had nothing to do with Christmas. Though the bigger shock was having that realization about “Jingle Bells.”
    I had the same experience with the texts, as I mentioned in a previous comment and should have mentioned in the post. My recording doesn’t include them, so this year was the first time I had them available.

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  10. Rob G

    I think that some of those songs, the older ones at least, came to be associated with Christmas over time because of the connection of Christmas with winter. I don’t mind that too much. But I know what you mean — there are some that I wouldn’t care if I never heard again.
    I remember reading somewhere a person opining that the last new Christmas song to become popular and which had any real Christmas substance was “Do You Hear What I Hear?” A good song, I think, but sad that it’s almost as old as I am. I can remember its becoming popular when I was little, but I honestly can’t think of anything new that’s good subsequent to that. Maybe you could add “I Wonder as I Wander,” which is an older song that didn’t become well known until the 60’s. But a lot of the popular Christmas songs of the 60’s were simply new versions of old standards.

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  11. Mac

    If there are any good ones it’s probably unlikely that I would know of them.
    When I first became aware of “I Wonder As I Wander” it was described as a folk song, which I didn’t entirely believe. It just doesn’t sound like one. Turns out it was at most based on a folk fragment.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Wonder_as_I_Wander

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