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This page is an expanded version of the printed program notes for the Vashon Island Chorale's December 2007 "Yuletide Concert".

YULETIDE CONCERT

Frostiana: Seven Country Songs  (1959)
by Randall Thompson  (1899–1984)

Randall Thompson has often been hailed as the dean of American choral music.  Early in his career, Thompson focused on orchestral works, with three finely crafted symphonies, but by the 1940s he had turned predominantly to choral music.  Thompson’s many illustrious positions included the directorship of Philadelphia’s acclaimed Curtis Institute and a professorship at Harvard.  His many choral compositions form the core of the American repertory, and range from the idyllic The Peaceable Kingdom to the boisterously patriotic The Testament of Freedom.  Indeed, his brief Alleluia remains the most frequently performed piece of American choral music.  Not bad for a chap who, as an undergraduate, had failed in his first audition to join the Harvard Glee Club: he later quipped, “My life has been an attempt to strike back.”  Thompson’s style is very meticulous—often almost every note on the page has an articulation or related marking—and yet the overall effect is of a spontaneous and sincere reaction to the text.

Frostiana is one of Thompson’s most beloved works.  Delightful and urbane, it is a collection of “Seven Country Songs” on texts by the great American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963).  The cycle was composed in the summer of 1959 to fulfill a commission for the bicentennial of the incorporation of Amherst, Massachusetts.  Thompson himself conducted the premiere, which was sung by a volunteer ensemble drawn from throughout the township, not unlike the Vashon Island Chorale.  Both Thompson and Frost were adopted New Englanders, and Frost was suitably impressed by the work to direct his estate not to allow other composers to set his poems to music, a ban which continues, more or less, today.  In 1965, Thompson orchestrated the work, and even later made an arrangement for band.  We will perform the original version, with a demanding piano accompaniment. 

Thompson was confronted with some musical challenges in this work, and he applied his remarkable compositional technique to them.  Chief among these challenges was a logistical complication: the sopranos and altos were to rehearse separate from the tenors and basses.  Thompson, ever the consummate craftsman, opted for an ingenious solution.  Only in the first and last of the seven songs does the full ensemble behave as one.  Between them, there are two pieces for men (tenors and basses) only, two pieces for women (sopranos and altos) only, and a central movement in which the two groups both participate, but behave as separate entities.  The order was determined by a technique found in several Bach cantatas, in which the outer movements complement each other, as do the second and penultimate movements in a mirror-like fashion, and so forth.

Another challenge in composing Frostiana was the technical simplicity of the text.  Frost is essentially a conservative poet, handling meter, rhyme, and stanza in historically traditional manners.  Thompson chose to use these predictable elements, but finds ways to create diversity within the music by calling on a technique known as text-painting.  All seven songs are littered with moments in which the music re-creates in sound the meaning of a specific word or phrase.  This can be a very simple technique—such as giving the choir high notes for words like “high”, “hill”, or “heaven”—but Thompson’s text-painting is far more subtle.  For example, he will at times depict the text in only one of the four voices, or the text is reflected more in the piano than the choir.  A few examples are given below, but rest assured that the curious listener may find many more.

1.  The Road Not Taken 

A text memorized by so many of us as schoolchildren, “The Road Not Taken” is scored for the full choir.  The poem is in four stanzas, and Thompson sets the stage by having the entire choir sing in unison for the first two: a pre-emptive hint that a traveler can only follow one road.  In the third verse, as Frost proclaims “I kept the first for another day”, Thompson lets the tenors depict that “other road” as they briefly splice from the rest of the choir.  The tenors have another special moment of text-painting on the word “sigh” in the fourth stanza; here Thompson adopts another method loved of Bach, that of a falling half-step to depict in music a sigh-like vocalization.  Much has been written about the fact that Frost’s poem is ambiguous as to whether “the difference” was a positive or negative one, or whether it even matters.  Thompson takes an unusual approach by depicting both possibilities: after the last line of text is sung, the piano embarks on a playful statement of the main melody, which is concluded by a more somber setting in the choir.  The piano has the last say, however, as the final chords are simply open fifths: there is no third to indicate whether the music should be considered in D major (i.e. traditionally happy) or D minor (traditionally sad).  Frost and Thompson both allow the listener to draw his own conclusions.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

2.  The Pasture

Thompson’s tempo indication reveals just how literal he intends the setting to be: “Lento pastorale”, or “Slow and pastoral”.  The piano ambles along in the traditionally pastoral 6/8 time, but when the tenors and basses enter, the meter shifts to 4/4, which is more suitable to the scansion of the text.  It is particularly appropriate that this poem be set for men’s voices alone: after all, it could easily be considered from the point of view of the male farm-hand inviting a girl on a casual walk as he goes about his chores.  One delightful moment is the depiction of the mother-cow and her young calf, who “totters when she licks it her tongue”, as the rhythm suddenly moves faster to represent the tottering.  This song also includes one of Thompson’s simplest but most beautiful compositional moments: the delicate downward scales and suspensions for the final statement of “I sha’n’t be gone long.”

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too.

 3.  Come In

As in “The Pasture”, here the piano plays a crucial role in the structure of the work.  The text is from the point of view of an individual walking at dusk outside the forest, and hearing from within the singing of a thrush, a variety of wood-bird which includes nightingales.  Thompson gives a birdsong-like motive to the piano, beginning with two pairs of ascending fifths, then a series of accelerating repeated notes.  The otherwise spare and empty texture of the piano emphasizes the loneliness of the woods.  Thompson also evokes the darkness of night by calling on the altos to sing at the very bottom of their range.  In the third stanza, Frost indicates that the setting sun “still lived for one song more”, appropriately set by the altos’ octave leap followed by a slowly descending scale.  The music ends with the piano/thrush issuing a final invitation.  “Come In” is scored for sopranos and altos only.

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music — hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn’t been.

 4.  The Telephone

For the middle movement of his cycle, Thompson reserves his most complex structure.  The text is a conversation between a man and a woman, who use a trestle-flower as a telephone-like communication device.  You may perhaps picture a fair maiden in a second-story room, speaking into a flower which is connected, like two cans and a string, to a flower at the ground, where listens her beloved.  The men are energetic as they re-tell the experience, but the women behave more coyly.  This movement features a particularly challenging piano part, winding up and down the keyboard as the flower’s vine would wind up and down the side of the house.

‘When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say –
You spoke from that flower on the window sill –
Do you remember what it was you said?’

‘First tell me what it was you thought you heard.’

‘Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned by head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word –
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say –
Someone said “Come” – I heard it as I bowed.’

‘I may have thought as much, but not aloud.’

‘Well, so I came.’

5.  A Girl’s Garden

This is the longest poem of the cycle, and in order to render it intelligible to the listener, Thompson directs all the women to sing it in unison, as a single vocal line.  The poem depicts the story of a village know-it-all, who, as a young girl, intended to plant a garden, but instead dumped seeds and fertilizer on an empty plot of land, and “begged the seed” rather than work hard to sow the garden.  The melody is simple, almost folk-like, but the music moves quickly and the singers must have their wits about them.  Also, how often does one get to sing words like “wheelbarrow” and “dung”?  That same stanza includes two moments of remarkably subtle text-painting, as “she always ran away and left / her not-nice load”: the word “left” is held for a long time, as “not-nice” is given a suitably, er, delicate setting.  At the very end, the women finally split into three-part harmony to depict the lazy girl who now self-righteously instructs others: “It’s as when I was a farmer.”

A neighbor of mine in the village
            Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
            A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
            To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
            And he said, ‘Why not?’

In casting about for a corner
            He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
            And he said, ‘Just it.’

And he said, ‘That ought to make you
            An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
            On your slim-jim arm.’

It was not enough of a garden,
            Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
            But she don’t mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
            Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
            Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
            And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
            Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
            Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn
            And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
            That a cider apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
            Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
            When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
            A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
            How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
            She says, ‘I know!

‘It’s as when I was a farmer —’
            Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
            To the same person twice.

6.  Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

This poem is so familiar as to be often attributed as the most well-known American poem.  The scene is a simple one: a man with his horse, traveling on a long journey, and stopping briefly in the woods to watch the snow fall.  It is a miniature masterpiece, with a sophisticated but simple rhyme scheme, and is highly representative of Frost’s manner of telling the reader only part of the story.  Thompson responds with a similarly sophisticated but simple setting.  Here the piano depicts the slow and delicate snowfall in 4/4 time, as the men sing in 6/8 time, thereby reversing the relationship of “The Pasture”.  The final line is punctuated by silences which re-enforce just how sleepy the rider is.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells and shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

7.  Choose Something Like a Star

Thompson gives his setting of “Choose Something Like a Star” a tripartite structure, in which the opening and closing sections place the sopranos on a repeated D to depict the star, while the more impassioned middle section is a more direct declamation.  Text-painting abounds.  The most striking example is the soprano’s opening D on the text “O Star”, resting above the choir as a star rests above the skies.  Also, at the very end, as we are gently encouraged to “be staid”, the choir rests on a long-held D as well.  But Thompson’s genius is most clear in depicting both the frustration inherent in the eternal quest for knowledge, and the calm required to resolve the quest satisfactorily.

The final poem in Frostiana is the most introspective and philosophical.  In contrast with most of the preceding poems, it is structurally free, with a highly complex rhyme scheme.  As is so often the case in Frost’s poetry, the meaning is obscured somewhat.  The star can be interpreted religiously as symbolic of a deity, or scientifically as representative of all knowledge.  In either view, the final crux is the same: in order to learn about greatness, we must work to achieve it within ourselves.  Well, or it could be about having faith in that which we do not (yet?) know.  Or maybe it’s about patience with the world around us.  Perhaps it’s all three, and a myriad beyond…but isn’t that the measure of truly great poetry?

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud –
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.
Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.
It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

One final note.  Frost certainly did not write in a vacuum.  Just as Thompson’s settings evoke the structure and text-painting of Bach, in “Choose Something Like a Star” Frost has made an overt reference to another famed “star” poem, by the great English Romantic, John Keats (1795–1821).  Keats’s 1819 sonnet is in part a study on immortality, as he was keenly aware of his own steadily diminishing health.  But it is also a beautiful dedication to his recently betrothed fiancée.  Unfortunately, the couple were never united: the tuberculosis which had already captured Keats’s mother and younger brother soon took the poet himself.

Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art –
            Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
            Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
            Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen masque
            Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
            Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
            Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

INTERMISSION

Nukapianguaq  (1993)
Inuit chants, adapted by Stephen Hatfield  (born 1956)

Stephen Hatfield is particularly well known for his choral adaptations of indigenous musics from various world cultures.  The term “adaptations” is chosen purposefully to eschew the more traditional term “arrangements.”  Historically, composers—including some of history’s greatest, like Béla Bartók and Ralph Vaughan Williams—have taken folk melodies from their own cultures and, essentially, cleaned them up.  They may add harmonies, smoothen rhythmic and metric irregularities, modernize or translate the text, develop upon the original source material, and so forth.  Hatfield tends to avoid any of these interpretative actions, preferring simply to place these ancient, generally nameless and authorless tunes into a choral texture.  Admittedly, this is already an act which betrays the music’s original context, which therefore beg the question: is it preferable for the music to disappear entirely, or to appear in a new guise?  And where does a composer/arranger/adapter cross the line between purist respect for an indigenous culture, and the desire to ensure that such a culture is preserved through dissemination?  These are questions which every musician—and, ideally, every listener—gets to answer for oneself.

But enough with questions of taste, historicity, aesthetics, and philosophy!  Regardless of such considerations, Hatfield is one of Canada’s most accomplished choral composers, born in British Columbia and currently resident on Vancouver Island.  Most of his music is composed on commission for various Canadian and American youth choirs, and incorporates some kind of folk or ethnic element.  His tastes are truly universal, embracing a sailors’ shanty from Nova Scotia (All for Me Grog), an Ecuadorian pan-pipe melody (La lluvia, probably his most performed work), a meditative Tamil song from Sri Lanka (Ödi Ödi), and a traditional South African Xhosa dance (Dubula).

In Nukapianguaq, Hatfield turns to the Inuit peoples—formerly known as Eskimos—who inhabit the northernmost expanses of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland.  The work is essentially a collection of several authentic, wordless chants, grouped together as a coherent whole.  The title is actually the name of a prominent Inuit singer, whose son created the initial chant in memoriam.  There follows a section of heterorhythm, where two groups sing different chants, in completely different tempi and meters.  Next is a tune titled “Small Dog Tied to the Porch”, which is a playful rendition of throat singing—traditionally, this music would be sung by two women, grasping each others’ arms and singing directly into each others’ mouths.  (These songs often end in laughter, because of the tickling sensation in the throat caused by the other singer’s breath!).  More meditative melodies follow, and Hatfield indicates some to be sung by soloists, thereby helping to give a fuller sense of the original traditions.  Nukapianguaq finishes with a frenzied war chant.

O magnum mysterium  (1994)
by Morten Lauridsen  (born 1943)

In the Northwest, Lauridsen’s story is very much one of “Local Boy Makes Good.”  The town of his birth is Colfax, Washington, which has maintained a population of about 3,000 for a hundred years, nestled at a crossroads between Spokane and Pullman.  He was raised in Portland, studied at Whitman College in Walla Walla, and worked as a firefighter near Mount St. Helens.  Upon relocation to Los Angeles, Lauridsen undertook further studies at the University of Southern California, where he also gained a professorship and has now taught for over thirty years.  Yet this Northwest boy regularly returns home: he summers in one of the more remote San Juan Islands.  By some accounts, Lauridsen is the most often performed living American composer, both at home and abroad—no mean feat for a creator of almost exclusively vocal music.  His choral cycles Madrigali (1987), Les Chansons des roses (1994), and especially Lux aeterna (1997), are frequently performed and recorded by choirs throughout the world.  That said, O magnum mysterium easily remains Lauridsen’s most popular work.

The Latin text is an ancient one: in liturgical Catholic worship, it has for centuries been one of the responsories for the Matins service on Christmas morning.  Composers have frequently adopted these words, from the Renaissance (Victoria, Palestrina, Byrd, Gabrieli, Morales, and Willaert, to name but a few) to the twentieth century (Poulenc, Maxwell Davies, Rorem, Harbison, Rütti, Villette, and no doubt dozens more).  It is a gentle depiction of the birth of Christ in the feeding-trough of stable animals, and an acclamation to his mother, Mary.  In a tradition dating at least five hundred years, composers generally give this text a gentle, thoughtful treatment, a mood in which Morten Lauridsen uniquely excels.

Lauridsen has described his setting as an “affirmation of God’s grace to the meek…a quiet song of profound inner joy.”  It is essentially in a three-part, “ABA” structure, in which the opening material later returns with an elaborate soprano descant; the concluding coda incorporates motives from throughout the work.  Lauridsen composed his seven-minute motet for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, a large and extraordinarily resonant ensemble with whom Lauridsen shares an especially close relationship.  Over the past several seasons, it has also become the closest thing to a “calling-card” composition for our own Vashon Island Chorale.

In terra pax: Christmas Scene  (1954)
by Gerald Finzi  (1901–1956)

Gerald Finzi is one of many composers for whom recognition during his lifetime did not extend far beyond his native England, but whose global reputation has benefited greatly from the compact-disc generation.  He was always a somewhat frail individual, both in matters of health and of spirit; the early deaths of his father and three brothers, and his mentor’s death in the trenches of the First World War, only confirmed his removed, shy, introspective nature.  He settled in rural Hampshire, surrounded by an apple orchard and a vast library of English literature, writing beautiful song-cycles to Shakespeare, Milton, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, and lesser-known luminaries such as Thomas Traherne.   During the Second World War, he opened his country home to German and Czech refugees.  The post-war period saw many of his greatest masterworks, such as the ambitious choral anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice (1946), the Clarinet Concerto (1949), and Intimations of Immortality (1950, to poetry of William Wordsworth) for chorus and orchestra.  In 1951, Finzi was diagnosed with leukemia, though he continued to compose vigorously.  His final composition, a superb Cello Concerto, was premiered on the eve of his death in 1956.

In 1954, Finzi composed In terra pax (“And on earth, peace”), scored for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, and a small orchestra of strings, harp or piano, and cymbals.  This “Christmas Scene” is unusual in that it depicts not a divine birth, but a modern reflection thereon.  Finzi took his text from two sources: the baritone soloist sings the poetry of Robert Bridges (1844–1930), while the choir and soprano soloist invoke the Gospel of St. Luke.  Bridges served as Poet Laureate, the King’s official poet, and therefore was quite well known, though today his reputation is less secure.  The full scene, comprising some seventeen minutes’ duration, is in a basic three-part structure, in which the baritone and Bridges form the outer parts.

The strings and baritone begin the work.  Finzi sets Bridges’ words conversationally, depicting a lone observer casually walking through the English countryside on Christmas Eve.  Upon hearing distant church-bells, the observer recalls the birth of Christ.  Finzi then interpolates, instead of the poem’s original third stanza, St. Luke’s retelling of the angels’ annunciation of Christ’s birth to the shepherds.  The centerpiece is the declaration of the angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”  Here, Finzi gives the choir complex, overlapping melodies, very much reminiscent of the pealing of bells, thereby connecting the angels’ song to Bridges’ modern observer.  The baritone soloist concludes with a solemn reflection on the significance of the words and the Christmas story.  The strings have the final music, quoting the bell-sounds of the angelic choir.

In terra pax is essentially a sacred composition, in that the texts ostensibly deal with religious matters, though Finzi himself was an avowed agnostic, and did not compose the work to a commission.  Of course, this is not particularly unusual: history is replete with non-believers who have created some of the most glorious sacred music ever written.  And yet, in another way, this is precisely the crux of the work.  Finzi’s purpose is not to create a dramatic paean to deity, but to reveal the inner beauty of the tale, regardless of any listener’s spiritual beliefs.  In this respect, the bell-sounds were particularly important to Finzi.  As a young man, he had participated in the ringing of bells in the small church on Chosen Hill, outside Gloucester.  In 1956, after conducting a performance of In terra pax in that town, he made another visit to the church, to introduce his friend Vaughan Williams to those very same bells.  Finzi there contracted chicken-pox from the sexton’s children.  Already severely weakened from leukemia, that final performance of In terra pax would regrettably prove to be his last.

* Note:  The third stanza of Bridges’ poem, marked here in brackets and italics, was not set by Finzi, who replaced it with the Biblical verses indicated.  The stanza is included here for those who may be curious about Bridges’ poetry. 

            Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913

            Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
            [Peace to men of good will.]

A frosty Christmas Eve
            when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
            where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
            in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me
            peals of bells aringing:
The constellated sounds
            ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
            with stars was spangled o’er.

Then sped my thoughts to keep
            that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
            by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
            and marveling could not tell
Whether it were angels
            or the bright stars singing.

[Now blessed be the tow’rs
            that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer
            unto God for our souls:
Blessed be their founders
            (said I) an’ our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ
            in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch
            the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above    
            and the mad romping don.]

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them,

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly lost praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

                        — St. Luke 2 : 8–14

 But to me heard afar
            it was starry music
Angels’ song, comforting
            as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
            to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me
            by the riches of time
Mellow’d and transfigured
            as I stood on the hill
Heark’ning in the aspect
            of th’eternal silence.

                        — Robert Bridges 

The Twelve Days of Christmas  (1970)
Traditional English carol, arranged by John Rutter  (born 1945)

Britain has developed a particularly rich Christmas tradition.  John Rutter has written that in England, “Christmas carols were the earliest form of vernacular choral literature permitted by the Church, back in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.”  Banned by Oliver Cromwell during the Puritan regime of the seventeenth century, many English carols disappeared forever.  The Twelve Days of Christmas may be one of the survivors from that era.  Indeed, some claim that it was a coded method for teaching the catechism, specifically for use during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany.  In this theory, the “true love” is God, the “partridge in a pear tree” is Christ on the cross, the “four calling birds” are the four Gospels, the “eight maids a-milking” are the Beatitudes, and so forth.  At any rate, the tune first appeared in print in 1780 (though not quite in the version we now know: the famous “five gold rings” phrase was added by the great English baritone Frederic Austin in 1909).  Carols in general slowly regained seasonal prominence, and even the most illustrious of composers turned their attention to carol texts: but two examples are Handel’s tune for Joy to the world and Mendelssohn’s for Hark! the herald angels sing.  By the Victorian era of the late nineteenth century, Christmas carols were so popular in Britain as to inspire Dickens’s famous tale.  And, writes one British journalist in yet more recent times,  “Rutter has become the musical equivalent of Dickens, synonymous with the season.”

Rutter wrote his first carol while a schoolboy, and has admitted that early in his career “carols were my calling cards.”  In the early 1970s, he was given responsibility for editing Carols for Choirs 2, the sequel to a highly successful anthology of carols old and new by major and minor English composers.  Two further volumes have since continued, always with a strong Rutter fingerprint.  Since then, he has established a major international reputation, including large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, such as Gloria (1974), Requiem (1985), and more recently Mass of the Children (2003), performed by the Vashon Island Chorale last year.  While some may pigeon-hole his works as “light music”, their melodiousness, fine craftsmanship, and sheer joy have guaranteed their continued popularity.

Rutter’s 1970 arrangement of The Twelve Days of Christmas is particularly delightful, and most notably serves as a model of text-painting.  For each gift in the story, Rutter finds musical representation.  Some of the days are simpler, such as the first day, sung by only one section, the sopranos.  By the fourth day, all four sections—each a “calling bird” of sorts—have joined in.  The women’s voices alone are granted the “eight maids a-milking”, while the piano invokes a raucous dance for the “nine ladies dancing.”  The tenth day brings a dramatic countdown, and the twelfth features a pianistic drumroll leading to a truly grand finale.