Wednesday 20th December 2023 at 4.00pm
Duration: 30 min
This concert will be ticketed – Adults £7.50, Child £5.
A Ceremony of Carols is an 11-movement work by the British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-76). Its text consists of an eclectic mix of anonymous medieval texts and later poems rather than familiar carols.
Source: www.classical-music.com
Britten composed it in March to April 1942, while crossing the Atlantic on the Axel Johnson, a Swedish cargo ship, in the thick of the Second World War. At the time, the composer and his partner Peter Pears were heading back to Britain after a three-year stay in the US.
Source: www.classical-music.com
The work begins and ends with a plainchant Procession and Recession that the choir enter and leave the stalls or concert hall to. The eighth movement, meanwhile, is an Interlude for the harp alone.
Source: www.classical-music.com
Shortly after the Axel Johnson left the US, it docked briefly in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was while browsing in a bookshop there that Britten found a copy of The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, compiled by Gerald Bullett. The poems in it fired his imagination to write a Christmas work.
Source: www.classical-music.com
