A Ceremony of Carols-Procession

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A Ceremony of Carols
(Benjamin Britten)
& Traditional Carols and Holiday Songs
from Around the World

BENJAMIN BRITTEN: A Ceremony of Carols
Benjamin Britten spent nearly three years in America, from the early summer of 1993 until March of 1942; then, after waiting six months for passage, he left the United States in a Swedish cargo boat. The trip across the war torn Atlantic took more more than a month, and during this period Britten composed two choral works, Hymn to St. Cecilia and A Ceremony of Carols. He also brought with him several other compositions which had already been performed in the United States, but had not yet been heard in English. In the words of one of Britten's biographers, Eric Walter White, these new works "met with ready acceptance (in England), partly because of their obviously attractive qualities of ease, grace and intelligibility and partly also because it was immediatly apparent that during his three years residence in the United States his mind and music had strikingly matured." The two works composed on shipboard were first performed during the last weeks of 1942, A Ceremony of Carols being premiered on December 5 by the Fleet Street Choir in Norwhich Castle. The initial favorable impression has been strengthened by repeated hearings, and A Ceremony of Carols has become one of the more popular musical works for the Christmas Season. The texts of the eight carols that Britten chose for A Ceremony of Carols were drawn from anonymous Medieval sources and from poems by James, John, and Robert Wedderburn, Robert Southwell and William Cornish. These carols are preceded by a Procession and followed by a Recession, both sung a capell, and are interrupted some two thirds of the way through the work by an Interlude for harp solo (No. 7). Britten has woven teh eleven sections into a cyclic entity of haunting charm, and the combination of treble voices (particularly when sung by a boy choir, since the work loses something of its ethereal charm if sung by women) and harp is most successful in maintaining the medieval liturgical atmosphere which fits the texts of the carols so well.-Gregg Smith


The Gregg Smith Singers, The Dorothy Shaw Hand Bell Choir, Fort Worth Chamber Ensemble, The Texas Boys Choir, George Bragg-Conductor

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Music

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