Newsletter 2 – July 2023

Dear friends,

This newsletter replaces the ‘Piece of the Week’ for this week.

For many choral directors, this is the time of year when Christmas music comes into focus – in fact for some of you everything is planned and decided already! But it seems a good time to introduce half-a-dozen of my carols – some new, and some newly available as separate digital offprints. Next month I’ll introduce some keyboard music for Christmas, too.

Candle Carol
I wrote this carol just as the first Covid lockdown was starting, with little idea of what the future might hold. The words are by me, and they focus on the four candles lit in most churches during Advent, one each week, representing hope, peace, joy, and love.  It is easy to learn, and I wrote it for a Christmas service in a small village church – one year it was postponed, the next year it was sung by the regulation four singers in face-masks, and it was also recorded virtually by eight singers.
Accompanied by organ or piano, it is scored for SATB, but the lower two parts are optional, so it is also very suitable for upper voice choirs.
Here’s a recording
Candle Carol is in the brand-new Carols for Choirs 6 published by OUP. It will also be available separately as a digital download soon from OUP’s digital providers.

Sweet babe, sang she
This carol is aimed at more experienced choirs and it is an expressive portrait of the traditional Nativity scene, setting the words of the traditional ‘Lute-Book Lullaby’, for solo soprano (or semi-chorus) and SATB, unaccompanied. While the chorus sing an ostinato lullaby in the background, the solo soprano (or semichorus) sings reflectively in the foreground, and passages of gentle ‘alleluias’ make contrasting interludes for all voices together.
It was first performed last Christmas by the Houston Chamber Choir, director Robert Simpson.
Recording (first performance) with scrolling score
Published by Colne Edition, print or digital download – details here

The other four carols are around ten years old, but they have not been available singly before – two of them are taken from my Advent cantata  ‘O Come Emmanuel’, and the other two form part of my Christmas cantata ‘A Light in the Stable’ (both published by OUP), and I am delighted that they are now for sale separately:

There is a rose-tree – SATB unaccompanied
A poignant and richly harmonic setting of a translation of the traditional German text telling of the Rose of Love.
Recording with scrolling score
Digital download (pdf) from Sheet Music Plus (and other OUP digital providers).

Chanticleer – SATB with piano or organ
By turns lively and reflective, this setting of a seventeenth-century poem celebrates the joy of the awakening earth with the coming of Christ.
Recording with scrolling score
Digital download (pdf) from Sheet Music Plus (and other OUP digital providers)

He is born (Il est né) – SATB with piano or organ
The traditional French carol presented in a lively new arrangement with an English translation by the composer as well as the French words.
Recording with scrolling score
Digital download (pdf) from Sheet Music Plus (and other OUP digital providers)

A Light for Today – SATB unaccompanied
A setting of a section from Longfellow’s poem Three Kings came a-riding which communicates the calm and peace of the Nativity scene, the visitor’s gifts, and Mary’s wondering anticipation of the future for her son.
Recording with scrolling score
Digital download (pdf) from Sheet Music Plus (and other OUP digital providers)

I think that’s enough for now! In the next month or two I’ll introduce some Christmas keyboard music.

Thank you for reading!

Alan