christmas carols
SATB, SA or TB & Piano | 4' | Graphite | Text: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ring Out, Ye Bells! is a joyous Christmas carol. Paul Laurence Dunbar writes, "Ring out, ye bells! / All Nature swells / With gladness at the wondrous story, / --The world was lorn, / But Christ is born / To change our sadness into glory. [...] No, be not still, / But with a will / Strike all your harps and set them ringing; / On hill and heath / Let every breath / Throw all its power into singing!"
SATB, SSAA or TTBB a cappella | 4' | Graphite | Text: Charles Dickens
Glorious, Glorious adapts text from the final, jubilant scene of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. No longer the miserly curmudgeon he used to be, Scrooge resolves to live in the “Past, the Present and the Future” and to bring the spirit of Christmas into his daily life.
SATB, SSAA or TTBB a cappella | 3' | Graphite | Text: Barbara Crooker
Completing the Circle sets a text by Barbara Crooker: "Gathering branches / of green pine / in the dead of the year, / making rings of fire / in wax and wood, / completing the circle / with calls and cards, / wreathing the children / in cinnamon and chocolate, / stringing berries and corn, / stringing memories, / quilting them tightly, / in winter, / with the days of grey / and iron nights."
SSA & harp or piano | 5' | Graphite | Text: Hildegard von Bingen
Hildegard's original Ave Generosa text celebrates the Virgin Mary. Here, a secular erasure of that text praises Hildegard herself and all women, regardless of their faith: "You are a shining white lily, / O lovely and tender one, / with all the celestial symphony resounding through you."
SATB a cappella | 3.5' | Graphite | Text: Dolly Radford
Text for The Christmas Rose comes from Dollie Radford's poem December:
"No gardener need go far to find / The Christmas rose, / The fairest of the flowers that mark / The sweet Year’s close... But every gardener’s work this month / Must surely be / To choose a very beautiful / Big Christmas tree, / And see it through the open door / In triumph ride, / To reign a glorious reign within / At Christmas‐tide."
