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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
To be asked to write something for the Christmas Eve service of Nine Lessons and Carols in King's College Chapel is the penultimate Anglican accolade before a Royal Wedding or Funeral anthem or a Coronation Te Deum.
When this pleasurable invitation arrived back in the summer I faced the problem usual with any vocal genre--to find the right text. Once this is settled, music should follow sure as day follows night. But with the Christmas Story the field is at once delimited and thoroughly gleaned--nothing new is possible: everything is familiar; angelic Annunciation, no room at the inn, Virgin Birth, shepherds in the fields abiding, angelic chorus guiding them to the stable, the Infant who bears Infinity, Eternity, Redemption within his tender body, cradled between ox and ass, the Wise Men led...
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