Monday, December 7, 2015

Leading onward, beaming bright

Today’s Christmas carol comes to us from a Victorian, who wrote it on his sickbed in 1859. It’s technically for Epiphany (which is the post-Christmas season), but my house, my rules and I’m putting it here.

The melody for “As with Gladness Men of Old” may be more familiar to you from one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns, “For the Beauty of the Earth”. It lends itself to beautiful harmonies regardless of the lyrics. As you can hear in this rendition from the Wells Cathedral Choir.


Wells Cathedral was one of my surprise discoveries when I lived in Britain. You walk into a 14th Century building and see an example of scissors arches that you think had to date from the latter part of the 20th Century. See what I mean?




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