Bart & Britten

A Ceremony of Carols was composed in part during five weeks in 1942 that Britten spent travelling by ship from New York to England during the Second World War.

During the voyage the ship stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Britten purchased a book of medieval poetry, The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems. Poems from this book, along with Gregorian Chant and other poetry spanning 14th to 16th century England, were the inspiration for A Ceremony of Carols...

spoptlight on the harp

Britten had intended to write a harp concerto and so had been studying the instrument. This provided the basis and probably the inspiration for his choice of harp to accompany the vocal parts in A Ceremony of Carols.

In addition, the movements "This Little Babe" and "Deo Gracias" have the choir reflecting harp-like effects by employing a canon at the first in stretto.

Gregorian inspiration

Originally conceived as a series of unrelated songs, it was later unified into one piece with the framing processional and recessional chant in unison based on the Gregorian antiphon "Hodie Christus natus est", heard at the beginning and the end.

old English

A Ceremony of Carols consists of eight polyphonic settings of mostly anonymous 15th- and 16th century poems, which Britten had discovered in the handbook The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems.

The “carols” retain their unique flavour by Britten's extensive use of old English language.

Christmas traditions

The mystical atmosphere of A Ceremony of Carols carries on, in fact, through Poulenc’s Quatre Motets Pour Le Temps de Noël. And to wrap it all up, we turn to the age-old tradition of English Christmas carols.