Nativity of Christ, The
The third movement from the cantata Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration for mixed chorus and orchestra. There are no vocal solos. A recording of the complete cantata can be found on the CD Eternity Shut in a Span.
Duration: 3’25”
Difficulty: 4/5 (Difficulty Rating Overview)
Listen on YouTube
-
VOICES
Mixed Chorus (divisi/no solos)
(This work may also be performed with piano accompaniment)
ORCHESTRA
2 Flutes
1 Oboe (doubling English horn)
2 Clarinets in B♭
2 Bassoons
2 Horns in F
2 Trumpets in B♭
2 Bass Trombones (Tuba optional)
Percussion (3 players)
Timpani
Bass Drum
Floor Toms (small, medium, and large)
Snare Drum
Tam Tam
Suspended Cymbals (medium and large)
Piatti
Finger Cymbals
Tambourine
Small Triangle
Vibraphone
Glockenspiel
Crotales (C, D, F, G, and A)
Chimes (Tubular Bells)
Marimba
Xylophone
Harp
Strings
-
The Nativity of Christ
Robert Southwell (1561-1595)
Behold, the father is his daughter's son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is and force doth faintly creep.
O dying souls, behold your living spring;
O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;
Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs.
Gift better than Himself God does not know;
Gift better than his God no man can see.
This gift doth here the giver given bestow;
Gift to this gift let each receiver be.
God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;
God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
Man altered was by sin from man to beast;
Beast's food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh.
Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed
As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.
O happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.
-
PUBLISHER’S NOTES
Mark Foster (Hal Leonard)
Treating the voices as additional orchestral instruments to accompany a beautiful and expressive melodic line, J.A.C has created an exciting and unique piece that will thrill audiences and challenge both singers and conductors.
PROGRAM NOTES
Thomas L. Durham, Professor of Music, Brigham Young University
"The Nativity of Christ" by the Renaissance poet Robert Southwell celebrates the seeming contradictions of Christ's incarnation. "Behold the father is his daughter's son" opens the verse, and several other paradoxes follow. Harmonically, the composer uses a mixture of both triadic and quartal patterns. The violins open in tremolo on a quartal chord as the women chant a single syllable in rapid sixteenth notes. Concurrently, the men sing a strong melody that begins with a rising fifth on the word "behold." After what can almost be described as a men's chorale, the strings, winds, and brass revisit in succession the sixteenth note idea, only now in triads instead of the original quartal structures. The opening material returns, but the women and men have interchanged: now the sopranos and altos sing the melody and the tenors and basses accompany. A middle section develops into a fortissimo climax, "God shall have me." This intensity eases, but another buildup ensues in a textual (and nearly melodic) canon. Although the words for the men and women begin out of phase, Redford compresses them until finally, the chorus simultaneously thunders the word "renew" on an A-major triad with an added ninth. A short, colorful orchestral coda underscores the excitement.
-
Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration was commissioned by the Utah Chamber Artists and premiered on December 11, 1993 at Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City by the Utah Chamber Artists with Barlow Bradford conducting. A recording of the premiere performance was broadcast nationwide in December 1994 over NPR affiliated stations on the syndicated program The First Art. The work was recorded for CD by the Utah Chamber Artists for their album Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration (Bonneville Classics BCD 9501-2).
The Utah Chamber Artists presented the work (with piano accompaniment) at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art during their series of concerts with the Israel Chamber Orchestra in 1995 and at the San Diego ACDA conference in 1996. Welcome All Wonders has also been performed by the California Master Chorale under David Hughes, the University of South Carolina Concert Choir directed by Larry Wyatt, the choir of Lover’s Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas with Constantina Tsolainu conducting, and the Knoxville Symphony under Kirk Trevor, the Riverside Master Chorale, conducted by Karen Garrett, and the combined choirs and orchestra of Pacific Lutheran University under the direction of Richard Nance and Brian Galante.
-
“Still, there was one more present under the tree Saturday, namely J.A.C. Redford’s Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration, commissioned by the Utah Chamber Artists for their first-ever concert in Abravanel Hall. And a handsome package it is, a five-movement choral symphony that weds poems from Renaissance and modern-day England and America to music that embraces all three. The result is a piece that sounds at once old and new, as the exuberant dissonances of the opening, drawn from the poetry of Richard Crashaw, give way in celebratory fashion to the antique piping of a shepherd’s dance. At times Britten and Rutter are recalled, but in a way that never sounds derivative. Likewise the second movement, a Waltonian meditation on Vassar Miller’s “Christmas Mourning,” whose violin solos seem almost a melancholic extension of Vaughan Williams, only here more “The Lark Descending.” At the center stands Robert Southwell’s “The Nativity of Christ,” here treated as a vibrant scherzo in which voices and instruments reinforce one another in bellike fashion. Then comes “Good Is the Flesh,” the first of two Brian Wren poems, whose pastoral serenity (with the voices unaccompanied at one point) leads to “Christmas Now,” its darker edge and Coplandesque tuttis culminating in an extended “Alleluia!” that returns us to the sharp enunciations that opened the piece. . . . throughout the scoring is imaginative, the counterpoint ingenious and the settings are at least as affecting as the texts themselves. Moreover, . . . despite their separable quality, [the movements] really do add up to a symphony, each section standing as an integral part of the whole.” (William S. Goodfellow, Deseret News, December 13-14, 1993.)
“The contemporary oratorio style has enjoyed the attention of Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Walton and others in the early part of this century, and more recently of John Rutter. The 1993 debut of Los Angeles composer J.A.C. Redford’s Welcome All Wonders: A Christmas Celebration heralds a new American voice in this genre: Redford’s careful selection and interpretation of his texts are matched by profound musical inspirations, and executed by well-crafted orchestrations and genuinely masterful choral writing.” (Gene Parrish, The First Art, NPR, December 1994.)
“A model of the contemporary oratorio style, the work is remarkable for its synergy of voices and instruments, interacting to form an organic unity of expressive dimension, lovingly projected from Redford’s richly-hued musical palette. . . . Redford’s compositional style is marked by melodies that hold in the mind; by rhythms that are always propulsive, however gently or forcefully; and by harmonies that vary in color and intensity—all with sensitive accommodation of the text. Amid the innocent and unbridled glee of the first movement, the lament of the second, the jocular depth of the third, the tranquility of the fourth, and the majesty of the last, we hear the echoing of faint songs—on a wind whose scent carries the tradition of Christmas legacies handed down for generations—now sung with deliberate abandon by J.A.C. Redford. Invoking the ancient artist’s custom, he autographs the score “Soli Deo Gloria” —to God alone the glory.” (Peter Rutenberg, Liner Notes from Utah Chamber Artists Welcome All Wonders, Bonneville Classics BCD 9505-2, 1995)