Returning to Britain in 1942 from the United States, where he had initially been advised to remain at the outbreak of the Second World War, Benjamin Britten composed both his Hymn to St Cecelia to a text by W. H. Auden and a set of seven Christmas Carols for women’s voices and harp. He had picked up a copy of The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, which includes a number of the texts set in what was to become A Ceremony of Carols, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an early stop on the journey; he was also studying harp technique for the purpose of an (ultimately not completed) commission for a harp concerto.

Having returned to England Britten added a solo harp interlude, as well as two further movements, and accepted the advice of critic Alec Robertson to use plainsong – the Magnificat antiphon for the second vespers of Christmas Hodie Christus natus est (which includes the line hodie in terra canunt angeli from which this blog post borrows its title) – as a processional and recessional, reusing music he had originally composed for that text to set Wolcum Yole!, a poem which mentions in turn Saints whose days fall between Christmas and New Year: St Stephen, St John, the Holy Innocents, St Thomas Becket, as well as looking ahead to Epiphany and Candlemas.

A Calmer and arguably more reverent mood is established in the description of Mary as a virtuous rose, interspersing English and Latin descriptions of a ‘wonderful thing’. This serves to introduce the Blessed Virgin, whose lulling of the infant Christ to sleep is described in movement 4a and heard in movement 4b and praised in movement 5. The sixth movement turns attention from the Mother to the Child, and indeed to the victory over evil that He will bring; hints of militaristic trumpets interplay with staggered entries which seem to make the upper voices echo the harp that accompanies them.

After the interlude the cold of winter is illustrated with a shivering motif in the harp accompanies a gentle canon describing a freezing winter night in which the appearance of poverty are described in terms of the trappings of royalty. Movements 9 and 10 turn from describing the nativity scene to the attitude of gratitude and praise for what the story of Christmas means:

“It is for man – then we always to Him give praise, and thank him than: Deo gracias!”

Happy Christmas to all readers.