A Christmas Fantasia
Carols and Fantasias
Ashley Riches (bass-baritone), Jamie Andrews (organ)
Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea/William Vann
rec. 2024, Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, London, UK
Albion Records ALBCD063 [64]
It seems strange to be reviewing a Christmas album before summer is even ended. Yet the Yuletide season will shortly be on us. Soon the shops will be filled with Christmas treats. The blurb reminds us that this is the third Christmas album by the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea directed by William Vann. (The previous two were A Vaughan Williams Christmas on ALBCD035, and An Oxford Christmas on ALBCD050.) This programme explores carols and fantasias by Ralph Vaughan Williams, his friends and former pupils. There also is a new Carol by William Vann.
There is a Little Door by Herbert Howells is a perennial favourite, a setting of a text by Frances Chesterton, the wife of the poet and writer G. K. Chesterton. Howells wrote this carol at the end of the First World War. In the closing stanza, this seemingly pastoral verse undergoes a transformation, a shift from an idyllic countryside to the battlefield. The poet reimagines the Magi’s gifts not as symbols of peace, but as offerings to the fallen.
No collection of carols would be complete without John Ireland’s The Holy Boy. Originally the third of Four Preludes for piano, it has been “dished up” in quite a few arrangements, including orchestral, chamber and brass ensemble. In 1941, Ireland set words by solicitor and gifted amateur musician, Herbert Sydney Brown, to the tune. It is always a pleasure to hear.
Rebecca Clarke’s two carols are included. There is no Rose is a vivid realisation of verses from the anonymous fifteenth-century English carol. The equilibrium between the solo baritone and the soprano-less choir is ideal. The gratefully contrapuntal Ave Maria for sopranos and altos only is a nod to Palestrina.
William Vann’s simply titled Carol is a setting of the poet/composer Ivor Gurney’s poem “Winter now has bared the trees” from the volume Severn & Somme (1917). The booklet notes that this is a pastiche of Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells and RVW. Whatever its antecedents, this perfectly well-wrought and effective fusion of text and music creates a perfect balance between the cold season and the “warmth and joy of Christian camaraderie”.
I guess few people will have heard Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’s Christmas cantata A Saviour Born. On the other hand, many singers who use the ubiquitous Carols for Choirs I (1961) will be familiar with his While the shepherds were watching. Rhythmically vital and modally tinged, this unaccompanied carol should be an indispensable part of the Yuletide playlist.
Gerald Finzi’s motet for baritone, double chorus and organ is a powerful meditation on Henry Vaughan’s poem The Brightness of this Day. It emphasises the simplicity and denial of excessive revelry, and concentrates on the spiritual core of the Season. It offers echoes of the “grand choral works of Parry and his [Finzi’s] teacher Edward Bairstow”.
Gustav Holst’s Christmas Day: A Choral Fantasy on Old Carols includes old favourites Good Christian Men, Rejoice, God Rest You Merry Gentlemen and Come, Ye Lofty, Come, Ye Lowly. The booklet points out that The First Nowell “was woven throughout as a counterpoint”. Holst dismissed it as “poor stuff anyway and not worth doing” but it has become a favourite. It is well worth having on Holst’s sesquicentennial anniversary.
New to me is Elizabeth Maconchy’s carol Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, setting an old English text from the fifteenth century. It is “light, joyful and elegant”.
About half of the programme is given over to Ralph Vaughan Williams’s contribution to the Christmas season. That includes three numbers from the Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire “collected, edited and arranged for voice and piano, or to be sung unaccompanied by Mrs E. M. Leather and R. Vaughan Williams”. The fieldwork was done in 1912-1913.
The first carol, Christmas Now is Drawing Near at Hand, contains a lot of theological moralising, but has a lovely melody. God Rest You Merry, Gentleman has a tune quite different from that popularly sung today. The sentiment of the third carol, On Christmas Day, seems lacking charity: Jesus strikes down the ploughman who was working on Christmas Day to make ends meet. It is truly melancholy.
The booklet promises that a subsequent “companion album, Carols from Herefordshire, (ALBCD064) contrasts all twelve carols in both settings”. Most of the choral versions have never been recorded before.
I remember as a teenager listening spellbound to a wireless broadcast of RVW’s Hodie (on 24 December 1972). I accept that the complete cantata has been judged as a little uneven, yet for me, it has always been full of Christmas magic. Two of the Carols from that cantata are heard here, The Blessed Son of God and No Sad Thought His Soul Afright. Musically, the latter presents a chilly, frost-bound landscape.
RVW’s Christmas Hymn from the Three Choral Hymns presents Miles Coverdale’s text after Martin Luther. This longish piece begins quietly, as a lullaby, as it meditates on the crib in Bethlehem. It soon builds intensity as the poet meditates on the theological significance of the Incarnation.
The Wassail Song was the last of the Five English Folk Songs. There is little theology here, just encouragement to enjoy a good drink.
Another work that epitomises the Season is RVW’s Fantasia on Christmas Carols, premiered in 1912 at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford Cathedral. It is scored for baritone soloist, choir and either orchestra or organ. (A piano and solo cello edition exists.) As this single movement progresses, RVW weaves together English folk carols, including The truth sent from above, Come all you worthy gentlemen, and On Christmas Night. Fragments of other carols are heard. The choir is instructed to use “extended techniques” such as “humming” and singing ‘Ah.’ There are delicious harmonies throughout.
John Francis devised the liner notes, with additional material by William Vann. They helpfully provide information about each piece and its background. The texts are included. There are details of the choir, musical director, organist and baritone soloist. The booklet is well illustrated with pictures of the composers and performers. The beautiful cover is based on stained-glass in Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, designed and made by Christopher Whall in 1900.
There is no need to talk of the faultless singing and organ accompaniment. The sound recording is excellent. This valuable Christmas offering explores much lesser-known repertoire, with a few old favourites for good measure.
John France
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Contents
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Christmas Now is Drawing Near at Hand from Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire (1920)
Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Here Is the Little Door from Three Carol Anthems (1918)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
The Blessed Son of God from Hodie (1954)
John Ireland (1879-1962)
The Holy Boy (1913)
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)
There Is No Rose (1928)
Ave Maria (c.1937; publ.1998)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Christmas Hymn from Three Choral Hymns (1929)
William Vann (?)
Carol
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960)
While the Shepherds Were Watching from the cantata A Saviour Born (1952)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Wassail Song from Five English Folk Songs (1913)
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
The Brightness of this Day (1922/1923)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
No Sad Thought from Hodie (1954)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Christmas Day: A Choral Fantasy on Old Carols (1910)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen from Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell (1967)
Ralph Vaughan Williams
On Christmas Day from Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire
Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912)
