My Lord has Come - Christmas with Ardingly College - Stone Records

My Lord has Come – Christmas music from Stone Records with Schola Cantorum, Ardingly
College, Sussex, one of the earliest schools in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England, with director Richard Stafford. Thus the inclusive character of the music on this recording. Stone Records Christmas offerings are usually a delight, usually livelier than much of the surfeit that floods the commercial market at this time of the year. Stone Records Christmas  offerings make gifts that keep on giving pleasure year after year. One of my favourites is Deck the Halls (A Swedish Christmas) Please read more HERE.

As befits the name “Schola Cantorum”, the choir are a youth ensemble, and the purity of their singing makes this collection a refreshing choice for the season. A maiden most Gentle is a variant of an ancient hymn, which Roman Catholics will instantly recognise as the Ave Maria. The English text is different, dispensing with the explicitly Marian devotion of “Immaculate Mary, Our Hearts are on Fire”, the emphasis changed to Mary's role in the Nativity, though the familiar refrain “Ave Maria” remains the same. Similarly, Bogoroditsye Dyevo is an arrangement of the sixth movement of Sergei Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil based on the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox faith. Thus the “nocturnal” hush, where the dynamic level rarely rises above pianissimo : private reverence in communal situation. Closer to the Anglican mainstream, The Truth from Above which Ralph Vaughan Williams found in Hertfordshire and used in his Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912). John Rutter'sarrangement of the traditional Appalachian song I wonder as I wonder employs a lilting melodic line for solo soprano, with supporting voices in lush harmony. 

  Lux aurumque is by Eric Whitacre, who wrote that “If the tight harmonies are carefully tuned and balanced, they will shimmer and glow”. The version here of The Holly and the Ivy  is by June Nixon, employing the organ to create flowing scalic ideas, bare chords soaring to majors at the end. All Bells and in Paradise is John Rutter’s 2012 adaptation of the Corpus Christii hymn, and the SussexCarol here is a setting by Philip Ledger. Bethlehem Down, perhaps the best known “modern carol” of all had no sacred origin. It was written by Peter Warlock – an agnostic if not rather more – and his drinking companion Bruce Blunt, for a competition in the Daily Telegraph, and used the proceeds for non-pious purposes.

This is the Record of John is an Orlando Gibbons' anthem on the discourse between St John the Baptist and the Jews and Levites, expressed in counterpoint and cadential flourishes. Lully, lulla, Lullay is a modern setting of the Coventry Carol, gentle harmonies leading to soaring descant. To liven things up, Tomorrow is My Dancing Day, where the organ dances, clumsily, to the Cornish folk song, adapted in the 1960's and described then as “medieval Dave Brubeck”. Light hearted humour, just right for the season of goodwill and cheer.