Christmas with Vaughan Williams (14): four Christmas songs for Epiphany

The Wise Men at the crib in Farmleigh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Although the Christmas season is 40 days long, and continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation [2 February], Epiphany traditionally marks the end of the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas.’

Already, the Christmas songs have long ceased playing in the shopping centres, most schools reopened earlier this week, most working people are back to work, and in many houses the Christmas tree and the Christmas decorations have been taken down. Even the Christmas cribs have been packed away, without waiting for the arrival of the three Wise Men.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany [6 January 2016], and we are celebrating the feast with a special Choral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, at 6 p.m. this evening.

The feast of the Epiphany is traditionally associated with three Gospel events: the arrival of the three Wise Men or magi at the stable in Bethlehem, which is today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 2: 1-12); the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan (see Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22), which is the subject of the Gospel reading next Sunday (10 January 2016); and the Wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-11), which is the Gospel reading for Sunday week (17 January 2016).

Throughout the Christmas season, I have been listening each morning to Christmas works by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

As we come to the end of the 12 Days of Christmas on this Feast of the Epiphany, I conclude my Christmas reflections this morning [6 January 2016] by listening to four Christmas songs written by or arranged by Vaughan Williams: ‘The Salutation Carol,’ ‘The Cherry Tree Carol’ (parts 1 and 2), from music written for his nativity play, The First Nowell, and ‘Sweet Was the Song the Virgin Sang,’ written for his Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’), which I was listening to earlier this Christmas season.



Yesterday’s reflection.

Series concluded

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (13): ‘The Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night’)

Monk’s Gate … the West Sussex hamlet near Horsham where Vaughan Williams first heard Harriet Verrall sing ‘The Sussex Carol’ (Photograph: Pete Chapman/Wikipedia)

Patrick Comerford

I am continuing my Christmas reflections, listening to the works of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). This morning [5 January 2016], I am listening to ‘The Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night’) which is included in The First Nowell (1958), a Nativity play for soloists, chorus, and small orchestra by Vaughan Williams.

This was probably the last piece ever written by the composer before his death, and it was left unfinished by him. It was completed by the late Roy Douglas (1907-2015) after Vaughan Williams’s death, based on fragments left by the composer. After Vaughan Williams died, Douglas insisted that the composer’s publisher, the Oxford University Press, indicate with the initials ‘RD’ those sections that Douglas had worked on, because he did not want Vaughan Williams “to be blamed for my shortcomings.”

The First Nowell was first performed on 19 December 1958, four months after the death of Vaughan Williams, and includes a version of ‘The Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night’), along with a number of other well-known Vaughan Williams works, including ‘The Salutation Carol,’ ‘The Cherry Tree Carol,’ and ‘The First Nowell,’ which is the final, closing movement.

‘The Sussex Carol,’ which is sometimes referred to by its first line, “On Christmas night all Christians sing,” is sometimes confused with ‘The Wexford Carol.’ Last Christmas, we sang ‘The Sussex Carol’ as the Post-Communion hymn at the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on the Sunday morning after Christmas [28 December 2014].

It is said the words of this carol were first published by Bishop Luke Wadding of Ferns in A Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs (1684). However, it is not clear whether he wrote the song or that he was recording an earlier composition.



‘The Sussex Carol’ often features in the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the Chapel of the King’s College, Cambridge, and a version of it also appears in the Irish Church Hymnal (5th edition, 2004) as Hymn No 176.

Edward Darling and Donald Davison, in their Companion to Church Hymnal, say the words are from a traditional English source, that they were adapted by Luke Wadding, and that they were reintroduced to English use through later editions of Luke Wadding’s carols, published in London in the early 18th century, subsequently undergoing considerable modification.

Both the text and the tune to which it is now sung were discovered and written down quite independently by Cecil Sharp in Buckland, Gloucestershire, and Vaughan Williams, who heard it being sung by a Harriet Verrall of Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, Sussex – hence its name, ‘The Sussex Carol.’

The tune to which it is generally sung today is the one published by Vaughan Williams in 1919. Several years earlier, he included the carol in his Fantasia on Christmas Carols, first performed at the Three Carols Festival in Hereford Cathedral in 1912.

The words of ‘The Sussex Carol’ in the version collected by Vaughan Williams are:

On Christmas night all Christians sing
To hear the news the angels bring.
News of great joy, news of great mirth,
News of our merciful King’s birth.

Then why should men on earth be so sad,
Since our Redeemer made us glad,
When from our sin he set us free,
All for to gain our liberty?

When sin departs before His grace,
Then life and health come in its place.
Angels and men with joy may sing
All for to see the new-born King.

All out of darkness we have light,
Which made the angels sing this night:
“Glory to God and peace to men,
Now and for evermore, Amen!”

Yesterday’s reflection.

Tomorrow: Four Christmas songs for Epiphany.

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (12): ‘The First Nowell’

A popular cartoon on social media this Christmas

Patrick Comerford

I am continuing my Christmas reflections, listening to the works of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). This morning [4 January 2016], I am listening to ‘The First Nowell’ recorded in Saint Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead, London in December 2005.

The YouTube clip here of “The First Nowell” is the concluding portion from The First Nowell (1958), a Nativity play for soloists, chorus, and small orchestra by Vaughan Williams. This is probably the last piece ever written by the composer before his death. It was left unfinished and was completed by Roy Douglas after Vaughan Williams’s death, based on fragments left by the composer.

About a third of it needed to be orchestrated and fleshed out from sketches. After World War II, there were many ugly rumours that Douglas had done all the orchestrations of the composer’s more recent works. Vaughan Williams responded, in his self-deprecating humorous way, that it was not fair to attribute the scoring to Douglas, since Douglas was a professional musician who made his living by, among other things, orchestration.

After Vaughan Williams died, Douglas insisted that the composer’s publisher, the Oxford University Press, indicate with the initials ‘RD’ those sections that Douglas had worked on, because he did not want Vaughan Williams “to be blamed for my shortcomings.”

The First Nowell was first performed on 19 December 1958, four months after the death of Vaughan Williams.

Roy Douglas died earlier this year, on 23 March 2015, at the age of 107.



In this YouTube clip, the soprano is Sarah Fox, the baritone is Roderick Williams, and they are heard here with the Joyful Company of Singers, and the City of London Sinfonia, directed by the late Richard Hickox.

The First Nowell includes a number of other well-known Vaughan Williams works, including ‘The Salutation Carol,’ ‘The Cherry Tree Carol,’ and ‘The Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night’). ‘The First Nowell’ is the final, closing movement.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Tomorrow: ‘The Sussex Carol’

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (11): ‘The truth from above’

The Christmas scene in a window in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

I am continuing my Christmas reflections, listening to the works of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). This morning [3 January 2016], I am listening to the Choir of Somerville College, Oxford, singing ‘The truth sent from above.’

The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral sang this carol at the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols before Christmas [21 December 2015] and as the Communion Motet at the Sung Eucharist in the Cathedral last Sunday [27 December 2015].

‘The truth sent from above’ is an English folk carol of unknown authorship usually performed at Christmas. It was collected in the early 20th century by English folk song collectors in Shropshire and Herefordshire. A number of variations on the tune exist, but the text remains broadly similar.

Cecil Sharp collected an eight stanza version of the carol from a Mr Seth Vandrell and Mr Samuel Bradley of Donninglon Wood in Shropshire, although Sharp notes that there was a longer version existed in a locally-printed carol book.

Vaughan Williams collected a different, Dorian mode version of the carol at King’s Pyon, Herefordshire, in July 1909 from Mrs Ella Leather, a folk singer who had learnt the carol through the oral tradition.

This version is sometimes known as the Herefordshire Carol. Vaughan Williams first published the melody in the Folk-Song Society Journal in 1909, although there it is instead credited as being sung by a Mr W Jenkins of King’s Pyon.

Vaughan Williams later used this carol to open his Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912. Gerald Finzi, with permission from Vaughan Williams and Ella Leather, also used the melody as the basis of his 1925 choral work The Brightness of This Day, substituting the text for a poem by George Herbert.

In this recording by the Choir of Somerville College, Stephen O’Driscoll is the baritone, and David Crown is the conductor.



This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love;
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all both rich and poor.

The first thing that I do relate,
Is that God did man create;
The next thing which to you I’ll tell:
Woman was made with man to dwell.

Thus we were heirs to endless woes,
’til God the Lord did interpose
And so a promise soon did run
That He would redeem us by his Son.

And at this season of the year
Our blest Redeemer did appear;
He here did live, and here did preach,
And many thousands he did teach.

Thus he in love to us behaved,
To show us how we must be saved;
and if you want to know the way,
Be pleased to hear what he did say.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Tomorrow: ‘The First Nowell.’

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (10): ‘Hodie’, 15 and 16: Choral and Epilogue

‘Never since the world began / Such a light such dark did span’ … Lichfield Cathedral at night during this Christmas season (Photograph: John Godley, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I have been inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

In this cantata, Vaughan Williams draws on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning [1 January 2016], we come to the end of this cantata, with the two closing movements, a second choral and the Epilogue.

15 and 16: Choral and Epilogue



15, Choral:

The text of the second choral, again for an unaccompanied chorus, is heart-achingly beautiful and is in two parts. The first verse is from an anonymous poem, while the second verse again was furnished by the composer’s second wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007), who was already established as a poet when they married:

No sad thought his soul affright,
Sleep it is that maketh night;
Let no murmur nor rude wind
To his slumbers prove unkind:
But a quire of angels make
His dreams of heaven, and let him wake
To as many joys as can
In this world befall a man.

Promise fills the sky with light,
Stars and angels dance in flight;
Joy of heaven shall now unbind
Chains of evil from mankind,
Love and joy their power shall break,
And for a new born prince’s sake;
Never since the world began
Such a light such dark did span.

16, Epilogue

The epilogue opens with a setting, for the three soloists, of a text adapted from two Gospel passages, John 1: 1, 4, and 14, and Matthew 1: 23:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. In him was life; and the life was the
light of men. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us, full of grace and truth. Emmanuel, God with us.

The chorus joins in on the final words, and the remainder of the work is scored for full chorus and orchestra, with soloists. It again sets a fragment of the poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ one of the earliest poems by John Milton (1608-1674), written while he was a 21-year-old at Christ’s College, Cambridge:

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,

If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime

Move in melodious time,
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of the morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,

And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

Yea, truth and justice then
Will down return to men,
Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

Yesterday’s reflection

Tomorrow: ‘The truth sent from above’.

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (9):‘Hodie’, 14, ‘The March of the Three Kings

The Adoration of the Magi ... a window by CE Kempe in the Lady Chapel in Christ Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

Today is New Year’s Day [1 January 2016] and we have arrived at the start of the New Year. This morning, I invite you to join me in listening to the fourteenth movement of Hodie, which tells the story of the arrival of the Three Kings, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, in Bethlehem with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

14, The March of the Three Kings



The March of the Three Kings represents the first time since the beginning of this cantata that soloists, choir, and orchestra join together to sing a movement. The chorus introduces the march, and the text was written expressly for the composer by his wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007). The linking of birth and death also has echoes of TS Eliot’s poem, Journey of the Magi.

Each of the soloists sings a separate verse, each describing one king and his gift, before joining together to finish the march.

From kingdoms of wisdom secret and far
come Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar;
they ride through time, they ride through night
led by the star’s foretelling light.

Crowning the skies the star of morning, star of dayspring, calls:
clear on the hilltop its sharp radiance falls
lighting the stable and the broken walls
where the prince lies.

Gold from the veins of earth he brings,
red gold to crown the King of Kings.
Power and glory here behold
shut in a talisman of gold.

Frankincense from those dark hands
was gathered in eastern, sunrise lands,
incense to burn both night and day
to bear the prayers a priest will say.

Myrrh is a bitter gift for the dead.
Birth but begins the path you tread;
your way is short, your days foretold
by myrrh, and frankincense and gold.

Return to kingdoms secret and far,
Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar,
ride through the desert, retrace the night,
leaving the star’s imperial light.

Crowning the skies the star of morning, star of dayspring, calls:
clear on the hilltop its sharp radiance falls
lighting the stable and the broken walls
where the prince lies.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Continued tomorrow.

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (8): ‘Hodie’, 12 and 13: Hymn and Narration

‘Behold there came wise men from the east’ … the Magi arrive at the crib scene in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

Today is New Year’s Eve [31 December 2015] and we have reached the end of the year. This morning, I invite you to join me in listening to the twelfth and thirteenth movements of Hodie, which include a hym based on the poem ‘Christmas Day’ by the Scottish poet William Drummond, and a narration adapted from Saint Matthew’s account of the first Christmas (Matthew 2: 1-11).

12 and 13: Hymn and Narration



12, Hymn

The hymn in the twelfth movement is the only solo movement for the tenor in the entire cantata. It said to have been a late addition by Vaughan Williams when the original tenor soloist complained about the size of his part. The movement is brilliantly scored for full orchestra, and opens with a bright brass fanfare. The text is the poem ‘Christmas Day’ by William Drummond:

Bright portals of the sky,
Emboss’d with sparkling stars,
Doors of eternity,
With diamantine bars,
Your arras rich uphold,
Loose all your bolts and springs,
Ope wide your leaves of gold,
That in your roofs may come the King of Kings.

O well-spring of this All!
Thy Father’s image vive;
Word, that from nought did call
What is, doth reason, live;
The soul’s eternal food,
Earth’s joy, delight of heaven;
All truth, love, beauty, good:
To thee, to thee be praises ever given!

O glory of the heaven!
O sole delight of earth!
To thee all power be given,
God’s uncreated birth!
Of mankind lover true,
Indearer of his wrong,
Who doth the world renew,
Still be thou our salvation and our song!

William Drummond, who was born at Hawthornden on 13 December 1585, was the son of John Drummond, first Laird of Hawthornden, and his wife, Susannah (Fowler). In 1590, John Drummond was appointed Gentleman-Usher to King James VI of Scotland, to whom the Drummonds were distantly related, and his uncle William Fowler was made private secretary to Queen Anne.

Drummond attended Edinburgh High School, and graduated MA from Edinburgh University in 1605. In 1606, he went to England and then to France, and studied law at the university in Bourges before returning to Scotland in 1608. His extensive book collection included a considerable theological section.

13, Narration

Vaughan Williams follows his setting of Drummond’s Christmas poem with a narration adapted from Saint Matthew’s account of the nativity (Matthew 2: 1-11):

Now when Jesus was born, behold there came wise men from the east,
saying, “Where is he that is born King? for we have seen his star in
the east, and are come to worship him.” And they said unto them,
“In Bethlehem.” When they had heard that, they departed; and, lo,
the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came
and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star,
they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into
the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell
down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures,
they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
The voice of the kings is provided by the men of the chorus.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Continued tomorrow.

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (7): ‘Hodie’, 10 and 11, Narration and Lullaby

‘Sweet was the song the Virgin sang’ ... the Nativity icon in the Lady Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert, that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning [30 December 2015], I invite you to join me in listening to the tenth and eleventh movements of Hodie, which include a short reading from Saint Luke’s account of the Christmas story, and a Christmas Lullaby.

10 and 11, Narration and Lullaby



10, Narration:

The tenth movement is a narration that is a short citation from Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 19):

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her own heart.

11: Lullaby:

The eleventh movement of Hodie is a lullaby scored for soprano and women’s chorus. This lullaby is based on an anonymous text that is also known in a setting by Benjamin Britten:

Sweet was the song the Virgin sang,
When she to Bethlem Juda came

And was delivered of a Son,
That blessed Jesus hath to name:
“Lulla, lulla, lulla-bye,
Sweet Babe,” sang she,

And rocked him sweetly on her knee.

“Sweet Babe,” sang she, “my son,
And eke a Saviour born,

Who hath vouchsafèd from on high
To visit us that were forlorn:
“Lalula, lalula, lalula-bye,
Sweet Babe,” sang she,
And rocked him sweetly on her knee.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (6): ‘Hodie’, 7, 8 and 9: Song, Narration, Pastoral

Trinity College, Cambridge, in the winter snow... both George Herbert, whose poetry is part of ‘Hodie,’ and Vaughan Williams were students here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning [29 December 2015], I invite you to join me in listening to the seventh, eighth and ninth movements of Hodie, which are inspired by poems by Thomas Hardy and George Herbert, interspersed with a short reading from Saint Luke’s account of the Christmas story.

7, 8, 9: Song, Narration, Pastoral



7, Song:

This movement features the baritone soloist, and is introduced by quiet and atmospheric woodwinds. The text is ‘The Oxen’ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928):

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

The poem ‘The Oxen’ was by Thomas Hardy in 1915, at the height of World War I and in this short poem he encapsulates the urge to faith that persists even in the face of all better judgment.

Hardy was familiar with the legend that cattle would kneel at midnight on Christmas Eve, and he had drawn on this legend many years earlier in Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). When Tess arrives at Talbothays looking for work as a milkmaid, Dairyman Crick tells her the story of William Dewy, who was walking home to Mellstock late at night after a wedding. Crossing a field, he is chased by a bull, but tricks the bull by breaking into song with a Christmas carol. “William used to say that he’d seen a man look a fool a good many times, but never such a fool as that bull looked when he found his pious feelings had been played upon.”

When he was writing his last symphony, the Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-1957), Vaughan Williams’s intended to create a programmatic symphony based on Tess of the d’Urbervilles, although the programmatic elements eventually disappeared as his work on the composition progressed.

8, Narration:

The eighth movement of Hodie is a narration using a single verse from the Nativity narration in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 20):

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God
for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was
told unto them.

“Glory to God in the highest.”

9, Pastoral:

This song is again scored for the baritone soloist, and is a setting of a poem by George Herbert:

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for Thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is Thy word: the streams, Thy grace
Enriching all the place.

Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Outsing the daylight hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I find a sun
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipped suns look sadly.

Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n His beams sing, and my music shine.

This is the second part of the poem ‘Christmas’ by George Herbert (1593-1633), which comes from his collection, The Temple, edited and published by Nicholas Ferrar after Herbert’s death.

George Herbert is remembered for carefully and pastorally nurturing of his parish and his parishioners, and for his poetry, much of which has been adapted as hymns. His spirituality is the Anglican Via Media or Middle Way par excellence, which his poetry provides constant evidence of the intimacy of his dealings with God and his assurance that, alone in a vast universe, he is held safe by the Crucified Christ.

George Herbert was born in Wales but is generally regarded as an English poet. His mother was a patron and friend of John Donne and other poets, while his older brother, Edward Herbert (later Lord Herbert of Cherbury), was an important poet and philosopher. From Westminster School, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA and MA and was elected a fellow. In 1618 he was appointed Reader in Rhetoric in Cambridge and in 1620 he was elected to Cambridge University orator, a position until 1628.

As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert intended becoming a priest, but he came the attention of King James I, and served at the royal court and for two years in Parliament as the MP for Montgomery in Wales.

Herbert gave up his secular ambitions in 1630, at the age of 37, and was ordained in the Church of England. He spent the rest of his life as the Rector of Fugglestone Saint Peter with Bemerton Saint Andrew, a rural parish in Wiltshire, near Salisbury.

George Herbert was known for his unfailing pastoral care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan described him as “a most glorious saint and seer.”

Throughout his life, he wrote religious poems that were characterised by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets.

In a letter to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, Herbert described his writings as “a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master.”

In 1633, shortly before his death, Herbert finished The Temple, a collection of poems that imitates the architectural style of churches through the meaning of words and their visual layout.

Some of his poems survive as hymns, including as “King of Glory, King of Peace,” “Let all the world in every corner sing,” and “Teach me, my God and King.”

Herbert died of tuberculosis only three years after his ordination. On his deathbed, he gave the manuscript of The Temple to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding – the community that later inspired TS Eliot – telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul,” but otherwise to burn them.

George Herbert … his poems were collected and published in ‘The Temple’ after his death, and many continue to be used as hymns

Herbert’s poems were published subsequently in The Temple: Sacred poems and private ejaculations, edited by Nicholas Ferrar. These poems are religious, some continue to be used as hymns, and many have intricate rhyme schemes, with variations of lines within stanzas described as “a cascade of form floats through the temple.”

Herbert also wrote A Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson), offering practical pastoral advice to priests. He tells them, for example, that “things of ordinary use,” such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to “serve for lights even of Heavenly Truths.”

Richard Baxter later said: “Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books.”

Although George Herbert died on 1 March 1633, he is remembered in Church calendars throughout the Anglican Communion on 27 February. Herbert influenced the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, and he in turn influenced William Wordsworth. Herbert’s poetry has been set to music by Vaughan Williams and many other composers, including Benjamin Britten, Randall Thompson and William Walton.

George Herbert ... the poem Christmas is included in his collection, ‘The Temple’

Christmas (I)

All after pleasures as I rid one day,
My horse and I, both tir’d, bodie and minde,
With full crie of affections, quite astray,
I took up in the next inne I could finde,

There when I came, whom found I but my deare,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there
To be all passengers most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night’s mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,
To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger:

Furnish & deck my soul, that thou mayst have
A better lodging then a rack or grave.

Christmas (II)

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.

The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light houres.

Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I finde a sunne
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.

Then we will sing, shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev’n his beams sing, and my musick shine.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (5): ‘Hodie’, 6, Narration

The Slaughter of the Innocents by Domenico Ghirlandaio … the fresco is part of a series of panels in the Cappella Tornabuoni in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, dating from 1486-1490

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents [28 December 2015]. During this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning I invite you to join me in listening to the sixth movement of Hodie.



6, Narration

The sixth movement of Hodie is a narration adapted by Vaughan Williams from Luke 2: 8-17 and the Book of Common Prayer, and introduces the shepherds.

Once again, the tenor sings the words of the angel; the chorus, introduced by the soprano, sings the words of the heavenly host. The men of the chorus sing the part of the shepherds:

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 clothes, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the
heavenly host praising God, and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will
toward men. We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we
glorify thee, we give thee thanks for thy great glory, O Lord
God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.”

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another,

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which
is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.”

And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the
babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made
known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were
told them by the shepherds.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Continued tomorrow.

Kitesurfers and hardy swimmers in the winter cold at Dollymount

Kitesurfing on the beach at Dollymount this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

It has been a busy Advent and Christmas season, with Carol services, Sung Eucharists, Choral Evensongs, seasonal sermons, cathedral meetings … as well as dinners, parties, shopping, cards and family visits.

I was preaching at the Sung Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning, and it was encouraging to see how many people were present this morning, both members of the cathedral congregation and visitors and tourists.

The Sunday after Easter is often known as Low Sunday, because of the low tone to celebrations after the climax of Easter. But it is also associated with the low numbers attending churches on that Sunday too. And the same might be said about the Sunday after Christmas.

Happily, this was not so at this morning’s Eucharist.

As the Communion Motet this morning, the Voluntary Choir sang ‘The truth sent from above,’ often known as the ‘Hereford Carol.’ This carol was collected early in the last century by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cecil Sharp and other folk song collectors in Shropshire and Herefordshire, and the version the choir sang this morning is the one collected by Vaughan Williams.

Vaughan Williams collected this Dorian mode version of this carol at King’s Pyon, Herefordshire, in 1909 from Mrs Ella Leather, a folk singer. He later used this carol to open his Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912).

Kitesurfers enjoying the high winds on Bull Island this afternoon (Patrick Comerford, 2015)

After coffee in the crypt and family visits in Clontarf, two of us decided to clear our heads this afternoon and went for walk along the length of the Bull Wall, with the waters of Dublin Bay to one side and the sands of Bull Island or Dollymount Beach on the other.

It was interesting to see how busy the port is, even on a Sunday afternoon during this extended holiday weekend. It was surprising too to see one or two swimmers braving the cold temperatures, the high tides and the choppy waters this afternoon.

Out on the long stretch of sand at Dollymount Beach, a dozen or more kitesurfers were taking advantage of the high winds along the shoreline.

It is good to get the salt air into my lungs after a few busy days like this.

Brave or foolhardy? A swimmer off the Bull Wall in Dublin Bay this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

‘Little children, love one another … because it is enough

Saint John with the poisoned chalice, above the main gate of Saint John’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford,

Christ Church Cathedral,

Sunday 27 December 2015,

Saint John the Evangelist,

11 a.m., Sung Eucharist

Readings: Exodus 33: 7-11a; Psalm 117; I John 1: 1-9; John 21: 19b-25.

In the name of + the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

This morning the Feast Day of Saint John the Evangelist, or Saint John the Divine, is an alternative to marking the First Sunday of Christmas.

It seems appropriate in the days immediately after Christmas that we should be jolted out of our comforts, in case we begin to atrophy, and to be reminded of what the great German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the “Cost of Discipleship.”

Following Christ is not all about Christmas shopping, feasts, decorations and falling asleep in front of the television – comforting, enjoyable and pleasant as they are, particularly in family settings.

Yesterday was the feast of Saint Stephen [26 December], often referred to as the first Christian martyr; tomorrow is the feast of the Holy Innocents [28 December], the first – albeit unwitting – martyrs according to Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In The Ariel Poems TS Eliot puts wise words into the mouth of the Wise Men who recalls the cold coming of it experienced in the ‘Journey of the Magi’. There he makes the connection between birth and death:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Between those two commemorations of martyrdom, we find ourselves today [27 December] marking the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist.

The symbol of the serpent and the chalice, a carving by Eric Gill in the capstone at Saint John’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

At first, this too may not seem to be an appropriate feastday to celebrate in the days immediately after Christmas. Even chronologically it creates difficulties for tradition says Saint John was the last of the disciples to die, making his death the one that is separated most in terms of length of time from the birth of Christ.

In art, Saint John the Evangelist is frequently represented as an Eagle, symbolising the heights to which he rises in the first chapter of his Gospel.

For Saint John, there is no annunciation, no nativity, no crib in Bethlehem, no shepherds or wise men, no little stories to allow us to be sentimental and to be amused. He is sharp, direct and gets to the point: “In the beginning …”

But the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel is one of the traditional readings on Christmas Day, so many of us immediately associate his writings with this time of the year.

Saint John the Evangelist is unnamed in the Fourth Gospel. Yet tradition identifies him with the John who is:

● one of the three at the Transfiguration,
● one of the disciples sent to prepare a place for the Last Supper,
● one of the three present in the Garden of Gethsemane,
● the only disciple present at the Crucifixion,
● the disciple to whom Christ entrusts his mother from the Cross,
● the first disciple to arrive at Christ’s tomb after the Resurrection,
● the disciple who first recognises Christ standing on the lake shore following the Resurrection.

The Beloved Disciple, alone among the Twelve, remains with Christ at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of Christ and the women and he is asked by the dying Christ to take Mary into his care (John 19: 25-27). After Mary Magdalene’s report of the Resurrection, Peter and the “other disciple” are the first to go to the grave, and the “other disciple” is the first to believe that Christ is truly risen (John 20: 2-10).

When the Risen Christ appears at the Lake of Genesareth, “that disciple whom Jesus loved” is the first of the seven disciples present who recognises Christ standing on the shore (John 21: 7).

The site of Saint John’s tomb is marked by a marble plaque and four Byzantine pillars (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Paul names John as one of the pillars of the Church in Jerusalem (see Galatians 2: 9). Later, tradition says, he takes over the position of leadership Paul once had in the Church in Ephesus and is said to have lived there and to have been buried there.

According to a tradition mentioned by Saint Jerome, in the second general persecution, in the year 95, Saint John was arrested and sent to Rome, where he was thrown into a vat or cauldron of boiling oil but miraculously was preserved from death.

According to ancient tradition, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, Saint John was once given a cup of poisoned wine, but he blessed the cup and the poison rose out of the cup in the form of a serpent. Saint John then drank the wine with no ill effect. A chalice with a serpent signifying the powerless poison has become one of his symbols.

Domitian then banished Saint John to the isle of Patmos. It was there in the year 96 he had those heavenly visions recorded in the Book of Revelation. After the death of Domitian, it is said, he returned to Ephesus in the year 97, and there tradition says he wrote his gospel about the year 98. He is also identified with the author of the three Johannine letters.

The tradition of the Church says Saint John lived to old age in Ephesus. Jerome, in his commentary on Chapter 6 of the Epistle to the Galatians (Jerome, Comm. in ep. ad. Gal., 6, 10), tells the well-loved story that Saint John continued preaching in Ephesus even when he was in his 90s.

He was so enfeebled with old age that the people carried him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher. When he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on each occasion and to say simply: “Little children, love one another.” This continued on, even when the ageing John was on his deathbed.

Then he would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out. Every week in Ephesus, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.”

One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?” And John replied: “Because it is enough.” If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is. “Little children, love one another.”

According to Eusebius, Saint John died in peace at Ephesus, in the third year of Trajan, that is, the year 100, when he was about 94 years old. According to Saint Epiphanius, he was buried on a mountain outside the town. The Basilica of Saint John the Theologian gave the later name of Aysoluk to the hill above the town of Selçuk, beside Ephesus.

A relief sculpture of Saint John ... one of a series in Pugin’s font in Saint Chad’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham with the symbols of the four evangelists (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I am constantly overwhelmed and in awe of the emphasis on love and light throughout the Johannine letters. That emphasis on love, which informs the story of Saint John’s last days, is brought through in the first of the Johannine letters (I John 1: 1-9) which we read this morning.

This emphasis constantly informs all aspects of my ministry.

I was once doing Sunday duty during a vacancy in a parish that has three churches. A student asked me at the time how many sermons I preached. I replied: “Three.”

“You preach three sermons every Sunday?” she asked with an air of incredulity.

I explained: “I preach three sermons all the time. The first is ‘Love God,’ the second is ‘Love one another,’, and the third, in case someone missed the first and second sermons, is ‘Love God and love one another’.”

That is the heart of the Christmas story, that is the heart of the Gospel, that is heart of the Johannine writings, and that, to put it simply, is why we celebrate Saint John in the days immediately after Christmas. “Little children, love one another.”

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Collect:

Merciful Lord,
cast your bright beams of light upon the Church;
that, being enlightened by the teaching
of your blessed apostle and evangelist Saint John,
we may so walk in the light of your truth
that we may at last attain to the light of everlasting life
through Jesus Christ your incarnate Son our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Grant, O Lord, we pray,
that the Word made flesh proclaimed by your apostle John
may ever abide and live within us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday 27 December 2015.

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (4): ‘Hodie’, 4 and 5, Narration and Choral

‘And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger’ … the Christmas Crib in the south transept chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, this Christmas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the First Sunday of Christmas, and this is also the Feast Day of Saint John the Evangelist [27 December 2015]. This morning, I am preaching at the Sung Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, at 11 a.m.

Over this Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), drawing on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert that reflect a variety of Christmas experiences, and the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospels.

Hodie, with its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is his last major choral-orchestral composition.

This morning I invite you to join me in listening to the fourth and fifth movements of Hodie.

4 and 5: Narration and Choral



4, Narration

The fourth movement is written for this portion of the Nativity narration in Luke 2: 1–7:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be
taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up into the
city of David, which is called Bethlehem; to be taxed with Mary his
espoused wife, being great with child.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished
that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son,
and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because
there was no room for them in the inn.

5, Choral

The Choral that follows is one of two in the cantata set for unaccompanied chorus, and uses a translation by Miles Coverdale of a hymn by Martin Luther:

The blessed son of God only
In a crib full poor did lie;
With our poor flesh and our poor blood
Was clothed that everlasting good.
Kyrie eleison.

The Lord Christ Jesu, God’s son dear,
Was a guest and a stranger here;
Us for to bring from misery,
That we might live eternally.
Kyrie eleison.

All this did he for us freely,
For to declare his great mercy;
All Christendom be merry therefore,
And give him thanks for evermore.
Kyrie eleison.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (3): ‘Hodie’, 3, Song: ‘It was the winter wild’

Snow blankets the First Court in Christ’s College, Cambridge, where John Milton was a student … the third movement of ‘Hodie’ is based on a fragment of a poem John Milton wrote here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

For these few days in this Christmas season, I invite you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

In this cantata, Vaughan Williams draws on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources, including John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert. These poems reflect a variety of Christmas experiences and they are bound together in this cantata by the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospel narratives.

With its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, Hodie flows with a vitality and inventiveness that belie a work written by Vaughan Williams in his old age.

This morning I am listening to the third movements, the Song ‘It was the winter wild.’ This movement is a gentle song for solo soprano, cooloured by the sound of the women’s choir. Here Vaughan Williams sets a fragment of the poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ one of the earliest poems by John Milton (1608-1674), written while he was a 21-year-old at Christ’s College, Cambridge.



3, Song: ‘It was the winter wild’

It was the winter wild,
While the Heaven-born child,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;

Nature in awe to him
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathise:

And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound
Was heard the world around,
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;

The hooked chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,

And Kings sate still with aweful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

The women of the chorus join the soloist for portions of the last verse.

John Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’

Oliver Cromwell and John Milton in the central pair of windows in the apse in Emmanuel Church, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

John Milton’s poem ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’ was written while he was a 21-year-old at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Although it was written in 1629, it was not published until 1645, when it appeared as the first poem in the Poems of Mr John Milton.

Milton wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, which earned him an international reputation in his own lifetime. William Hayley has called Milton the “greatest English author.” His poetry and his prose reflect deep convictions and they address religious and contemporary political issues, including censorship, religious freedom and divorce.

Samuel Johnson praised Milton’s Paradise Lost as “a poem which, considered with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind.” Johnson’s praise is true praise indeed, for the Lichfield writer was a committed Tory and the recipient of royal patronage, and he dismissed Milton for his politics, describing him as an “acrimonious and surly republican.”

Later, Milton had a great impact on the Romantic movement in England, and Wordsworth called upon him to rise from the dead and aid in returning England to its former glory.

Milton wrote this ode in December 1629, having celebrating celebrated his 21st birthday a few days earlier. Earlier that year, he had graduated BA at Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate at Christ’s College, where I have stayed in the past and where I have preached and lectured.

At first, Milton considered ordination as an Anglican priest, and stayed on at Cambridge to receive his MA in 1632. However, he never proceeded to ordination. After receiving his MA, Milton retired to his father’s home in Hammersmith, and spent six years in self-directed private study there and at Horton in Berkshire. He then travelled though France, Switzerland and Italy, returning to England as the Civil War began to unfold. Back in England, he continued to write, supporting himself as a school teacher.

By the mid-1650s, Milton was blind, yet he married a second and a third time. At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he went into hiding. A warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings were burnt. He was arrested and jailed briefly, and subsequently lived out his days in London and in ‘Milton’s Cottage’ in Chalfont St Giles.

In his later years, he never went to any religious services and responded with sarcasm to accounts of sermons from Nonconformist chapels. He died in 1674 and was buried at Saint Giles in Cripplegate.

The Great Gate of Christ’s College, Cambridge, where Milton was a student in 1629 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the time Milton wrote ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ in Cambridge, his Puritan contemporaries were stepping up their opposition to the celebration of Christmas Day. But, with Christmas Day approaching in December 1629, and conscious of both his own birthday and his birth, Milton, who was still at Christ’s College, was moved to write this ode about Christ’s birth.

Although the ode was the first poem in his 1645 collection, this was not the first poem he had written, for he wrote many of his Latin and Greek poems at an earlier time. Yet this ode often serves as an introduction to Milton’s poetry.

This is one of a set of poems that celebrates important Christian events: Christ’s birth, the feast of the Circumcision, and Good Friday. These poems place Milton alongside other English poets of the 17th century, including George Herbert, John Donne and Richard Crashaw. At the same time, however, it also reflects the origins of his opposition to Archbishop William Laud and his supporters within the Church of England.

The poem describes Christ’s Incarnation and his overthrow of earthly and pagan powers, and also connects Christ’s Incarnation with his Crucifixion, for God becomes human in Christ at his Nativity to redeem fallen humanity, and humanity is redeemed in Christ’s sacrifice at the Crucifixion.

Milton also connects the Nativity with the creation of the world, a theme that he expands later in Book VII of Paradise Lost. Like the other two poems of the set, and like other poems at the time, the ode describes a narrator within the poem and experiencing the Nativity.

Thomas Corns says this poem is “Milton’s first manifestation of poetic genius and, qualitatively,” and he puts it among his most significant poetic works – even before Paradise Lost. He also claims that the ode “rises in many ways above the rather commonplace achievements of Milton’s other devotional poems and stands out from the mass of other early Stuart poems about Christmas.”

The first complete setting of this ode was undertaken in 1928 by the Cambridge composer Cyril Rootham, with a setting for soli, chorus, semi-chorus and orchestra. Later, portions of the ode were set by Vaughan Williams in 1954, as part of the text of his Christmas cantata, Hodie, which we are listening to this morning.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Tomorrow’s reflection: ‘Hodie’, 4 and 5, Narration and Choral

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (2): ‘Hodie’, 1 and 2, Prologue, Narration

‘The Holy Family’ by Giovanni Battista Pittoni, the Altar Piece in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This morning [25 December 2015] and for the next week or so, until 2 January 2016, I invite you to join me each morning in a series of Christmas meditations or reflections as I listen to the Christmas cantata Hodie (‘This Day’) by the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

In this cantata, Vaughan Williams draws on English Christmas poetry from diverse sources. These poems by John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert, among others, reflect a variety of Christmas experiences and they are bound together by the narration of the Nativity story in the Gospel narratives.

With its blend of mysticism, heavenly glory and human hope, Hodie flows with a vitality and inventiveness that belie a work written by Vaughan Williams in his old age.

Hodie was composed by Vaughan Williams in 1953-1954 and is dedicated to Herbert Howells. This is the last major choral-orchestral composition by Vaughan Williams, and had its premiere on 8 September 1954 under his baton his baton at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester Cathedral. The cantata is in 16 movements, and is scored for chorus, boys’ choir, organ and orchestra, and features tenor, baritone and soprano soloists.

Hodie is a synthesis of Vaughan Williams’s entire artistic career, with elements drawn from most periods of his work. He had already experimented with interweaving Biblical texts with poetry in his cantata Dona nobis pacem, which shaped my reflections during Holy Week earlier this year. Some of the movements also reflect earlier works: the accompaniment to the ‘Hymn’ is similar to the Sinfonia Antartica, while the ‘Pastoral’ shares some elements from the Five Mystical Songs (1911), which I reflected on during Lent this year.

Hodie is bound together by three recurring motifs. One is first heard on the word “Gloria” in the first movement, and recurs whenever the word is introduced again. The second, introduced in the first narration, reappears at the beginning of the epilogue. The final setting of Milton’s text uses the same melody as the first song for soprano, although orchestrated differently.



1, Prologue: ‘Nowell! Nowell!’

The cantata opens with jubilant fanfares for brass, soon followed by cries of “Nowell!” from the full chorus. These introduce a setting of part of the Vespers for Christmas Day. This setting of the Latin text is the only part of the cantata that is not in English.

Latin text:

Nowell! Nowell! Nowell! Hodie Christus natus est: hodie salvator apparuit:
Hodie in terra canunt angeli, laetantur archangeli:
Hodie exultant justi, dicentes: gloria in excelsis Deo: Alleluia.

English translation:

Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!

Today Christ is born: Today the Saviour appeared:
Today on Earth the Angels sing, Archangels rejoice:
Today the righteous rejoice, saying: Glory to God in the highest: Alleluia.

The setting of the text is direct and uncomplicated, apart from the varied settings of the final “Alleluia,” yet it includes many rhythmic irregularities.

2, Narration:

Throughout Hodie, Vaughan Williams provides seven passages of narration from the Gospel accounts of the Incarnation. The first narration, which follows as the second movement, is one of several linking the various solo and choral movements of the piece. Each narration is scored for organ and boys’ choir, and takes its text from various portions of the Gospels. The first narration takes as its text Matthew 1: 18-21 and 23 and Luke 1: 32.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise: when as his mother
Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was
found with child of the Holy Ghost.
Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, was minded to put her
away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the
angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream.

The tenor soloist, introduced by a quiet woodwind melody, serves as the voice of the angel:

“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus.”

The full chorus then joins the soloist in the final part of the passage:

“He shall be great; and shall be called the Son of the Highest:
Emmanuel, God with us.”

Tomorrow: 3, Song: ‘It was the winter wild’

Yesterday: ‘Fantasia on Christmas Carols’

Christmas with Vaughan Williams (1): ‘Fantasia on Christmas Carols’

‘The Nativity,’ by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas arrives this evening [24 December], and my Advent reflections on Dietrich Bonhoeffer have come to end. Between this Christmas Eve and the Feast of the Epiphany [6 January 2016], I am listening to appropriate Christmas music by the great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

This evening, I am listening to his Fantasia on Christmas Carols. Then, from tomorrow [25 December 2015] and over the Christmas season, I am inviting you to join me each day in a series of Christmas meditations as I listen to Vaughan Williams’s Christmas Cantata Hodie (‘This Day’), his of musical styles set to poetry from most diverse sources, including John Milton, Thomas Hardy and George Herbert.



Vaughan Williams had a passion for Christmas that was nourished at an early age by his love of Christmas carols and by his childhood memories of singing them at his home in Leith Hill Place, Surrey, from Stainer and Bramley’s Christmas Carols New and Old (1867, 1878).

As an adult, his work with carols blossomed the founding of the English Folk Song Society and he began collecting them in the early 20th century in Essex, Surrey, Sussex, Somerset, Worcester and Hereford and other parts of England.

The tunes he collected were first published in the English Hymnal (1906), which he co-edited with Percy Dearmer, and later in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928).

Vaughan Williams wrote his Fantasia on Christmas Carols for the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford Cathedral in 1912. It was the first of several works inspired by the Christmas theme, including the masque On Christmas Night (1926) based on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, his great cantata Hodie (1953-1954), and the Nativity play The First Nowell (1958).

This Fantasia is written for baritone, chorus, and orchestra. It is a single movement lasting about 12 minutes and consists of three English folk carols, ‘The truth sent from above,’ ‘Come all you worthy gentlemen’ and ‘On Christmas night all Christians sing’ (also known as the ‘Sussex Carol’). These are interposed with brief orchestral quotations from other carols, such as ‘The First Nowell.’ Vaughan Williams had collected these folk songs in Sussex a few years earlier with his friend Cecil Sharp.

The notion of creating a musical structure out of folk tunes was not new to Vaughan Williams. His two Norfolk Rhapsodies (1905-1906) juxtaposed various contrasting melodies. Now Vaughan Williams saw the opportunity to feature a number of less familiar, unpublished English carols that he had collected with Cecil Sharp, as well as a number of old traditional favourites.

This Fantasia was dedicated to Cecil Sharp. It was first performed on the evening of 12 September 1912, conducted by the composer with the baritone Campbell McInnes.

True to his democratic convictions, Vaughan Williams made the work widely available in a variety of scorings: for full orchestra; for strings and organ; for organ or piano; and for solo cello.

This Fantasia is notable for its restraint. It is the least showy of his Christmas pieces, and it avoids more familiar carols.

Beginning with an introductory cello solo that has a narrative quality, the piece falls into four linked sections:

1, ‘This is the truth sent from above’ (baritone solo with wordless choral accompaniment):

The first part of the Fantasia is based on two variants of the same carol melody collected by Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire.

‘There is a fountain of Christ’s blood,’ was recorded by Vaughan Williams and Ella Leather, a folk singer, with Mr W Hancocks, a 70-year-old labourer, at Monnington, Herefordshire, in October 1908. ‘The truth sent from above’ was collected from Ella Leather, or sung by Mr W Jenkins at King’s Pyon, Herefordshire, in July 1909. This an English folk carol is of unknown authorship and was collected in the early 20th century by English folk song collectors, including Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp, in Shropshire and Herefordshire. A number of variations on the tune exist, but the text remains broadly similar.

Much of the haunting opening cello solo is derived from these two carols. Recounting the story of Adam’s fall and the coming of Christ the Redeemer, the tone is one of solemnity as the solo baritone intones ‘The truth sent from above,’ accompanied by a wordless chorus, evocative of a wintry rural English landscape.

After the final verse for chorus and soloist, the string orchestra breaks into ‘There is a fountain.’

Baritone Solo:

This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the god of love.
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all both rich and poor.

The first thing which I will relate,
Is that God did man create.
The next thing which to you I’ll tell,
Woman was made with man to dwell.

Then after this was God’s own choice
To place them both in paradise,
There to remain from evil free
Except they ate of such a tree.

And they did eat which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin,
Ruined themselves, both you and me,
And all of their posterity.

Choir:

Thus we were heirs to endless woes
Till God the Lord did interpose,
And so a promise soon did run
That he would redeem us by his son
(That he would redeem us by his son),
By his son.

2, ‘Come all you worthy gentlemen’ (chorus and orchestra):

Vaughan Williams now introduces the more jovial ‘Somerset Carol’ (‘Come all you worthy gentlemen’), a variant on ‘God rest you merry gentlemen’, collected by Cecil Sharp in Bridgwater and published in the fifth series of his Folk Songs from Somerset in 1909. Its climax is marked by a brief citation of ‘The First Nowell.’

Come all you worthy gentlemen that may be standing by
Christ our blessed saviour was born on Christmas day.
The Blessed Virgin Mary unto the Lord did pray,
Oh we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy.

The Blessed Virgin Mary unto the Lord did pray,
Oh we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy.

Christ our Blessed Saviour now in the manger lay,
He’s lying in the manger while oxen feed on hay.
The Blessed Virgin Mary unto the Lord did pray,
Oh we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy.

The Blessed Virgin Mary unto the Lord did pray,
Oh we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy.
The Blessed Virgin Mary unto the Lord did pray,
Oh we wish you the comfort and tidings of joy.

3, ‘On Christmas night’ (solo baritone):

This third section is based on another carol collected by Vaughan Williams, the ‘Sussex Carol’ (‘On Christmas Night, all Christians sing’), sung by Mrs Verrall of Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, on 24 May 1904. This was first published in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (1905) and later with in Eight Traditional English Carols (1919). This later combines with the ‘Somerset Carol’ and other carol quotations, including the ‘Wassail Song,’ a Yorkshire tune familiarised by Stainer, and ‘A Virgin most pure’ from Davies Gilbert’s Ancient Christmas Carols (1822).

Baritone Solo:

On Christmas night all Christians sing,
to hear the news the angels bring,
(News of great joy, news of great mirth.
News of our merciful King’s birth)
When Sin departs before thy grace,
then life and health come in its place.

Angels and men with joy may sing,
All for to see the new-born King,
(All for to see the new-born King).

4, The last verses of parts 2 and 3 combined, words and music: final apotheosis with prominent chimes and repeated references to ‘A Virgin most Pure.’

At the very end, Vaughan Williams removes us from the high spirits of merry-making in a poignant blessing for unaccompanied chorus, and we are carried back, as Michael Kennedy suggests, “across the snow-covered fields and away into the night.”

God bless the ruler of this house
and long on may he reign
(From out of darkness we have light
Which makes the angels sing this night)
Many happy Christmases he live to see again
(From out of darkness we have light
Which makes the angels sing this night).

God bless our generation
who live both far and near
(Glory to God and peace to men)
And we wish them a happy, a happy New Year
(Both now and evermore Amen).

God bless the ruler of this house
and long on may he reign
Many happy Christmases he live to see again
God bless our generation who live both far and near
And we wish them a happy, a happy New Year

Oh we wish you a happy, a happy New Year.
(Both now and evermore. Amen)

‘The Star of Bethlehem’ by Edward Burne-Jones

Tomorrow: ‘Hodie’, 1 and 2, Prologue, Narration