In 1942, sailing home to the UK from some time in the United States, Benjamin Britten selected eleven short Christmas poems in Middle English, Latin and Early Modern English from a book he had with him, of found in the ship’s library, Gerald Bullett’s English Galaxy of Shorter Poems and composed one of his great works, one of the great works in the choral repertoire, A Ceremony of Carols, settings of those poems to be sung at Christmas by children’s voices (soprano, soprano, alto), soloists and harp.
Almost a hundred years later, four children’s choirs around the world—Luminescence Children’s Choir (Canberra), Aquinas College Schola Cantorum (Perth), the Flanders Boys’ Choir (Belgium), and the Estonian Television Girls’ Choir, with support from Helen Moore and the APRA-AMCOS Art Music Fund—have commissioned from Australian–British composer Andrew Ford a Ceremony of Carols for two hemispheres and our times.
Ford has set the poems he’s selected for treble voices, soloists, and electric guitar. Among the poems Andrew has set, including Ben Jonson’s “I Sing the Birth” and Wendy Cope’s “The Christmas Life” and Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,” are some words from Judith Nangala “Crispin’s Midsummer Star Map” and a poem he commissioned from me, “Carol of the Advent Moon.”
Britten’s ceremony wanted to sing up, mourn and celebrate a distant childhood, whose innocence seemed almost doomed in a time of war; Ford, writing also for children’s voices, wants to catch something of his life’s experience of Decembers hot and cold, and the difficulties of faith and belief in our times. Those themes play in my poem, which I am proud to have included in his piece, which includes an introit and interlude for solo guitar and ten “carols.”
The composition, a masterpiece, premiers on 1 December in Perth. I’ll its performance by Luminescence Children’s Choir in Canberra (at Wesley Uniting Church) on 14 December [tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/i-sing-the-birth]. And I wish I could get to Antwerp to hear the Flanders Boys cover it on 22 December. Perhaps next Christmas in Tallinn…