With this Saturday Soundtrack falling just before Christmas Eve, I am sending a gift to readers of some of my favorite vocal ensembles singing several well-loved Yuletide tunes.

We have been hearing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel throughout Advent. Here VOCES8 is joined by members of Apollo5 and The VOCES8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra to perform Taylor Scott Davis’s beautiful arrangement of the tune.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is another pre-Christmas Day piece, as Christ speaks from Mary’s womb in this well-loved and familiar tune. It is performed here by Ensemble Altera (including our son, Andrew Bearden Brown) from a 2020 pandemic-era recording (thus the spacing of the singers).

The text of this carol, ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ is a poem first published in 1784 New Hampshire in a collection prosaically titled ‘Divine Hymns, or Spiritual Songs: for the use of Religious Assemblies and Private Christians’, compiled by Baptist minister Joshua Smith. Whether its provenance is English or American is still the subject of debate, but the transcendentalist beauty of its narrator communing with the divine through nature is not. Elizabeth Poston sets the deeply personal text without affectation in a quiet, almost shape-note hymn style.

Hailed as the leading professional chamber choir in the United States, Ensemble Altera brings beautiful and thoughtful music to every performance. Earlier this month, the group presented a concert of seasonal music in Boston and Providence. Andrew so enjoyed singing this music, including the arresting Michael Garrepy arrangement of O Holy Night which the group just released as a video.

Kenneth Leighton’s The Christ-Child Lay on Mary’s Lap is beautifully performed in this 2016 recording by The Queen’s Six. Based at Windsor Castle, members of The Queen’s Six “make up part of the Lay Clerks of St George’s Chapel, whose homes lie within the Castle walls.”

The lyrics for this piece are from a poem by G.K. Chesterton.

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)

The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

VOCES8 has a hauntingly beautiful take on the Ola Gjeilo’s arrangement of Gustav Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter, based on the well-loved poem by Christina Rossetti.

I love this VOCES8 rendition of the Philip Stopford setting of the Coventry Carol, the traditional English tune dating from the 16th century. Stopford’s Lully, Lulla, Lullay — filmed by VOCES8 in St. Stephen’s Walbrook Church, London — is so haunting, and soprano Eleonore Cockerham’s soft, clear, yet ethereal voice is a treasure.

Finally, we’ll end with a 2021 recording by the sopranos, altos, and countertenors of Ensemble Altera as they sing the traditional English carol Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in an arrangement by John Rutter. While it first appeared in written form in 1833, the carol is undoubtedly older. “The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice. An innovative feature of the telling is that Jesus’ life is repeatedly characterized as a dance.” 

However you celebrate the season, Happy Yuletide to one and all!

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Jorien Loman on Unsplash