Long associated with the music of Gabriel Jackson, in 2020 the Choir of Merton College, Oxford and their director Benjamin Nicholas won a BBC Music Magazine Award for their recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, a work which grounded its narrative of Christ’s suffering and humanity’s redemption in texts associated with the history of the College.The Christmas Story, again with a libretto assembled by the College’s chaplain the Revd Dr Simon Jones, takes the same approach to tell the story of Christ’s birth. Spanning the period from Advent to Candlemas, it mixes biblical narrative with liturgical texts and four specially commissioned poems by members of the College.The new poems are given to the College’s girl choristers (an independent part of its choral foundation since 2016), while the main body of the work is carried by the full choir and by an ensemble of flute, percussion, strings, saxophone and three trombones – the latter recalling the hieratic sonorities of the seventeenth-century works by Schütz and others which Jackson had in mind while composing The Christmas Story.
Tracklist
01. The Christmas Story, Advent: I. Conditor alme siderum
02. The Christmas Story, Advent: II. I look from afar
03. The Christmas Story, Advent: III. Expecting
04. The Christmas Story, Advent: IV. Sit Christe rex
05. The Christmas Story, Christmas: I. Veni redemptor gentium
06. The Christmas Story, Christmas: II. And it came to pass in those days
07. The Christmas Story, Christmas: III. Lullaby of the Beasts
08. The Christmas Story, Christmas: IV. And there were in the same country
09. The Christmas Story, Christmas: V. O magnum mysterium
10. The Christmas Story, Christmas: VI. Toccata
11. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: I. Tribus miraculis ornatum
12. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: II. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem
13. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: III. Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern
14. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: IV. And the third day there was a marriage
15. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: V. A Guest at Cana
16. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: VI. And it came to pass in those days
17. The Christmas Story, Epiphany: VII. Benedicite omnia opera
18. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: I. Lumen ad revelationem gentium
19. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: II. When the days of Mary’s purification
20. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: III. Nunc dimittis servum tuum
21. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: IV. Joseph and his mother
22. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: V. Lumen ad revelationem gentium
23. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: VI. And there was one Anna
24. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: VII. Anna’s Song
25. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: VIII. And when they had performed all things
26. The Christmas Story, Candlemas: IX. O nata lux de lumine
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