Christmas Song and Carols and the Multitude of Voyces Volumes
Multitude of Voyces are three volumes of sacred music by women published in 2019 and 2020. The first volume was dedicated to SATB anthems, the second to Upper Voices anthems from S to SSSSAA, and Volume 3 to Mixed Voices (mainly SATB) for Advent Through Candlemas. A fourth volume is planned to be dedicated to hymns.
But Multitude of Voices (VoV) is not just publications, it is a project/charity. It is described as:
Women have always composed sacred music, but their output has often been omitted from established
anthologies. In consequence, women are hugely underrepresented in this genre.
Our
Anthology series addresses this injustice in a bold way, presenting 63
women composers spanning 800 years of
music, across three printed volumes, with many historical works
published for the first time, and several works composed specially for
our volumes by both emerging and established composers.
Not only are the volumes published to promote the sacred works of women composer, but MoV also has a good YouTube (@multitudeofvoyces6516) and SoundCloud presence with performances of each entry in their volumes.
In Volumes 1 (2019) and 2 (2020):
Among the Christmas works in the volumes are:
Raphaella Aleotti's "Angelus ad pastores ait" (The angel [of the Lord] said to the shepherds):
"Angelus ad pastores ait"+
"Gebt in der Christnacht (Prayer on Christmas Eve)" by Fanny Hensel
"Gebt in der Christnacht"
"Weihnachtslied (Carol)" by Louise Reichardt (editorially reconstructed by Olivia Sparkhall):
I sing of a maiden SATB (divisi) by Alison Willis:
Alison Willis "I sing of a maiden"
"I sing of a maiden S"SS/A by Amy Bebbington:
Amy Bebbington "I sing of a maiden"
"Ave Maria": SAA Rebecca Clarke
Rebecca Clarke "Ave Maria"
"Hodie Christus natus est" SSA by Angelina Figus
Angelina Figus "Hodie Christus natus est"
Caroline Lesemann-Elliot "Regina Caeli" SS & continuo -See performance.
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Multitude of Voices Volume 3 Sacred Music by Women Composer (2020) is the volume that really has the seasonal works as it is title "Advent to Candlemas"
They include:
"Lo! The Star" by Judith Bingham
"A tender shoot" by Kerensa Briggs
A tender shoot by Kerensa Briggs
"Ivy Chief of Trees" It is by Sarah Cattley
"Ivy Chief of Trees It is" by Sarah Cattley
"The Shepherd" by Avril Coleridge-Taylor (lyrics by William Blake)
"Rhyfed, rhyfedd / Wonder, Wonder" by Rhian Samuel
"Gabriel’s Message" by Olivia Sparkhill
"Nunc dimittis" by Amy Summers
"Nunc dimittis" by Amy Summers
"Bethlehem’s Star / Betlehem’s stjärna" by Alice Tegnér, arr. Sarah McDonald
"There is no rose" by Alison Willis
"There is no rose" by Alison Willis
Elizabeth Poston
MoV is the official representative of the musical and
literary estate of Elizabeth Poston and the owner of her available
copyright. This is good news as much of her music has been unavailable. We are focusing a post on this soon.
For Christmas fans, this is "good tiding of great joy" as Poston was one of the predominant scholars and collectors of Christmas carols, writing two volumes dedicated to Christmas carols. This year (2024), MOV released a digital and print booklet of some of Poston's carols called "A Christmas Selection," which includes, free of charge, a copy of Poston's "Jesus the Apple Tree" as an encouragement to ensembles to do away with unauthorized and illegal copies of the carol.
MoV has also been newly licensed by CUP to publish and distribute printed leaflets of Elizabeth Maconchy's 'Nowell nowell nowell' (also to be found in our anthology Vol 3). It can be purchased at this link.
"Nowell, Nowell, Nowell"
MoV is working with Cambridge University Press to reintroduce Dame Maconchy's 'Candlemas Eve' on the poem by Robert Herrick
(SS or TT into 4-part round).(Note 1)
Sarah McDonald
MoV has released printed octavos of Sarah
MacDonald's arrangement of Alice Tegnér's well-known Swedish
carol "Bethlehem's Star/Betlehems stjärna" which MoV commissioned specially
for it Anthology Volume 3. It can be purchased here. (Note 2)
Overall, MoV is at the front lines of promoting women composers and reintroducing "lost' works by woman composers. Here at Christmas Carols and Sacred Musics, we scour the new carol books and recordings and even though, in our count, women are writing and publishing new carols than men, carol collections and recording continue to lack women's works.
+ Most of the Youtube videos we embedded are from Multitude of Voyces YouTube channel, but where we could not find a video, we tried to find another video of a performance, but these may not actually be a performance of the music as published by MoV. Our intent is to give you a sample hopefully spurring you to purchase the volumes and sheet music for your ensemble or private use..
2. Two self-promotions from us at Christmas Carols Blog: Make sure to see our post "The Christmas Music of Sarah MacDonald," which we know needs some updating but gives you a good dose of MacDonald's Christmas and seasonal arrangements up to 2021. Last, see our post
The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite.
Christmas, as we mostly now call it, gave us hymns, processions and chants, and in between, silence in church. Yule meant a vibrant pre-Christian secularity, with feasting and dancing, the noise of instruments and decorating the house with holly, ivy and mistletoe as a tribute to the gods of earth and air.
Much of the music on this album dates from an earlier time when in a throwback to Yule churches were decorated with Christmas greenery, and at home there would be carols sung round a burning Yule log, the two traditions side by side. But the songs on this album are contemporary performances, a matrix where acappella voices meet improvising instruments in a synthesis of secular and sacred.
Hailed as a "fascinating journey with music of timeless beauty", Trio Mediæval's acclaimed first disc "Words of the Angel" in 2001 launched the group into the elite circles of early music ensembles and introduced them to a broad international audience.
Formed in 1997, the Grammy-nominated vocal ensemble consists of founder members Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Anna Maria Friman, and Jorunn Lovise Husan, who joined the group in 2018.
Uranienborg Vokalensemble Releases Fred over Joden
Editor's Note: Description below is that of the ensemble or label.
Releases November 22, 2024.
Advent and Christmas are for many people a time for light and hope and warmth. Yet the world around us is cold and turbulent. Wars are being fought. People are fleeing from their homes. Children are dying. Thousands of people lack food and medicine. Our prayers are for peace. We sing "Beautiful is our Earth! Glorious is God’s heaven!" as a protest song for peace and justice, the world being unjust.
During Advent many of us are fond of the familiar and much-loved Christmas carols as we remember them from our childhood, and as they have been sung for generations. There are carols in these traditional arrangements on this album, but there are others in completely new arrangements, made specially for Uranienborg Vokalensemble and for this recording.
Christmas can be a festival that intensifies our feelings – what is good seems even better, and what hurts feels even more painful. Perhaps we have lost someone close to us: can we then sing "Oh, Christmas, so cheerful"? We know that there are people who look forward to Christmas but at the same time dread it, and we believe that Kjetil Bjerkestrand's arrangement brings out this element of equivocation and irony. The birth of Jesus – this is the message of Christmas! – a birth that changed the world for ever. May your Christmas be peaceful!
German Baritone Benjamin Appl Releases "The Christmas Album" on Outhere Music
German baritone Benjamin Appl celebrates Christmas through the enduring tradition of Bach chorales and popular carols, from as far afield as Germany, Austria, America, Britain, Sweden and France.
For this truly universal Christmas celebration he is accompanied by Germany's most famous children's choir, of which he was a member in his youth, the Munich Radio Orchestra and instrumentalists (including his own mother on guitar): "Christmas evokes intense memories and emotions in all of us. It takes us back to our childhood: that sense of magic and excitement, so often reawakened by the sight of a traditional Nativity scene, or the lights on a Christmas tree, or by hearing Christmas carols…It was with all these images in mind that I returned to my hometown to record this album with 'my' boys’ choir.
When, after more than twenty years, I found myself back among the choristers and heard the familiar sound, the emotion was very intense."
Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea Releases "A Christmas Fantasia" on Albion
Editor's Note: Description below is that of the label.
This is Albion’s third Christmas album with William Vann and his Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. It mainly comprises carols and fantasias of the first half of the twentieth century, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, his friends and former students. These are carols for choral, rather than for congregational, singing.
The more contemporary exception is a new carol by William Vann himself, composed for the recording, setting a poem by the poet and composer Ivor Gurney.
Two of the longer works can justly be called ‘fantasias’: Vaughan Williams’s well-known "Fantasia on Christmas Carols" and Gustav Holst’s "Christmas Day," which deserves to be every bit as popular.
There are premiere recordings of works by Rebecca Clarke, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Gerald Finzi in addition to William Vann’s Carol – and there are even two first recordings of carols from Herefordshire by Vaughan Williams set for a capella SATB. Other carols are by John Ireland, Herbert Howells and Elizabeth Maconchy.
The majority of the carols and fantasias are unaccompanied, but six of the 16 works are accompanied on the organ by Jamie Riches. The distinguished bass-baritone Ashley Riches joins the choir for three works.
It was recorded at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, London on 12 and 13 February 2024.
Gjermund Larsen Trio´s “Christmas Sessions” on Heilo
Editor's Note: Description below is that of the label.
Gjermund Larsen Trio´s “Christmas Sessions” is a warm and intimate Christmas album. The trio lets the melodies shine with a strong folk music identity.
After nearly 20 years of playing their own compositions, Gjermund Larsen Trio is now releasing their first Christmas album. In a beautiful, folk-inspired musical landscape, the trio interprets well-known and beloved Christmas songs in their own unique way.
Gjermund Larsen Trio, consisting of Gjermund Larsen (fiddle), Andreas Utnem (harmonium/piano), and Sondre Meisfjord (double bass), has received high praise, acclaim, and numerous awards since their debut release in 2008, including a Norwegian Grammy award (2008), the German Phonographic Critics Award (2015), and the TONO Composer Award (2016).
The trio had long wanted to make a Christmas album but hadn’t found the time to realize the project until now. When Gjermund Larsen Trio performed with the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir on their Christmas album “Veni – Songs of Christmas II” in 2022, it sparked even more motivation to begin their own Christmas project.
This fall, with just three recording days available, the trio entered Amper Tone Studio. The process was inspiring, intense, and productive. Gjermund Larsen explains:
– We had sketches, ideas, and thoughts about how we wanted to shape the music, but it took its final form and shape during three intense studio days. It’s both daunting and exciting to release music that everyone knows and has a strong attachment to. We selected the Christmas music we like best and gave it our own signature. Releasing Christmas music now also feels right for reasons beyond the purely musical ones. Many Christmas songs carry a powerful message of peace, something that is unfortunately more relevant than ever in these times!
With harmonium featured in all tracks, they create a warm and beautiful Christmas atmosphere. The intimate arrangements fit the repertoire well, keeping the overall feel natural and unpretentious. Gjermund continues:
– We believe this release will make an important contribution to the ever-growing jungle of Christmas albums. The album is instrumental, and the arrangements are original and unembellished. We play with a strong folk music identity, which we believe many will find familiar. In many ways, Christmas music today is everyone’s folk music.
1. Det kimer nå til julefest 03:22 2. Jeg er så glad hver julekveld 03:29 3. Stille natt 04:01 4. O jul med din glede 02:29 5. O helga Natt 04:21 6. Home for christmas 03:55 7. Du grønne glitrende tre 02:19 8. Det hev ei rose sprunge 02:56 9. Joleklokker over jordi 03:20 10. O Little town of Bethlehem 03:25 11. Deilig er Jorden 02:30
