Comfort and Joy: An English Christmas – December 7, 2024

John Rutter’s Magnificat for soprano soloist, choir and orchestra was written in 1990, and the première took place in May of that year in Carnegie Hall, New York. 

The Magnificat, also called the canticle of the Virgin Mary, is found in the opening chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, the point where Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth after learning that she is to be the mother of Christ. Traditionally, the words have been ascribed to Mary, though their strong resemblance to the Old Testament Song of Hannah and to various psalms makes it more likely that Luke himself interpolated them to express an appropriate sense of rejoicing and trust in God. 

Liturgically, the Magnificat belongs to the Office of Vespers (and its Anglican counterpart, Evensong) and to feasts of the Virgin Mary, and there are innumerable concise musical settings intended for use in church. Extended concert settings, however, are quite rare, Bach’s being the most notable (and even this was designed for use in the Lutheran liturgy). In the general layout of its movements and in its scale and dimensions, Bach’s Magnificat provided the obvious precedent for John Rutter’s setting. There is even a parallel to Bach’s Christmas interpolations in the use of a vernacular text on the Virgin Mary – Of a Rose, which (like so much medieval religious art) likens Mary and her child to a flower springing from the stem of Jesse. 

Like Bach, Rutter uses Gregorian themes associated with the text at various points in the work. But there, all comparisons end, since the style and content of Rutter’s Magnificat are not even remotely neo-Bachian, resting rather within an eclectic amalgam of more recent traditions that characterize much of the English composer’s choral writing. In his Magnificat, John Rutter has created a celebratory work reminiscent of outdoor processions in honor of the Virgin.

Vaughan Williams composed the Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912. It was first performed at Hereford Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival conducted by the composer. The single-movement work of roughly twelve minutes consists of the English folk carols The truth sent from above, Come all you worthy gentlemen and the Sussex Carol (‘On Christmas night all Christians sing’), all folk songs collected in southern England by Vaughan Williams and his friend Cecil Sharp a few years earlier. These are interposed with brief instrumental quotations from other carols, such as The First Nowell. 

The music is typical of Vaughan Williams’ earlier style relying heavily on a juxtaposition of modal harmony alongside direct quotations from folk songs (or Carols in this instance) he collected himself.

The Fantasia opens with an evocative solo bass line, played by cello, which introduces the text of the first section, This is the truth sent from above, sung by the baritone soloist. The wordless choral accompaniment underscores the simplicity of this opening section, which concludes again with the solo bass line.

The second section, Come all you worthy gentlemen builds to use the full choral forces to proclaim “tidings of comfort and joy” before subsiding once more at the introduction of the third section. This is a setting of the Sussex Carol (“On Christmas night all Christians sing”), which Vaughan Williams himself had collected.

The final section interweaves the choruses of the second and third with instrumental references to a number of other carols and folk melodies. Finally the tranquility of the opening returns and the voices vanish into the distance.