Gratitude Monday: O my deare hert

Today’s piece is a little on the long side (just shy of 30 minutes), but it’s worth the time, if only for the sake of putting aside all the mania that envelopes us in the last week’s run-up to the Big Day. Put down the icing gun, the wrapping paper, the grocery list and the 16 things you have to get done at work before hitting the road to visit the ‘Rents—just leave it all for half an hour and let the music of Benjamin Britten’s “Ceremony of Carols” wash over you.

Britten wrote this piece in 1942, for the Soprano-Soprano-Alto voices you hear here with harp. Later on, he arranged it for SATB, but this configuration is out-of-the-ordinary, so I’m going with it. It’s a collection of individual pieces, ranging from the Medieval to 17^th Century, which he only later decided to frame together with the unison processional and recessional.

Like yesterday’s piece, “A Ceremony of Carols” was composed during World War II. In Britten’s case, it was on the transatlantic return to Britain after three years in America. Imagine what that journey must have been like, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. But Britten created both this piece and his "Hymn to Saint Cecilia" on that voyage.

I find Britten a bit of a stretch (like Schoenberg). But I’m grateful that the traditions can take stretching like this, and find new ways to deliver on the beauty. See what you think.