As we enter this most unusual December, we will be featuring a selection of holiday music, mostly drawn from our annual Candlelight Christmas and Family Holiday Concerts.

We will be featuring an hour-long selection of video from these past concerts as a virtual Holiday Candlelight Concert on Tuesday, December 15 at 7 PM, and we hope that many of you will join us online for that event.

For today’s selection, we turn to the opening of our 2019 concert, and the glorious sound of the Manton Memorial Organ below the soaring trumpet line of Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Antiphon. The instrumental sets the mood as Dennis and the chorus proceed to their places, followed immediately by “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing,” Vaughn Williams’ setting of the words of George Herbert’s 17th-century text. The atheist Vaughn Williams originally set this text for baritone with a choice of accompaniments as the opening of his Five Mystical Songs—and in fact I first encountered this song in the version for baritone and piano as a college freshman. The version for SATB choir and organ is a familiar part of the Anglican choral tradition, a tradition I personally first encountered in college around that same time.

I joined the Voices staff as Artistic Administrator last January—even though it seems like a lifetime ago now!—so I will be discovering all of this footage along with you. I hope that you enjoy today's selection, and I am looking forward to being your guide through this repertoire while Maestro Keene takes a well-deserved break from curating this series.

Keen observers may note that the invitation to make requests for the Voices of Connection series is to send me an e-mail, so feel free to do so if you have a favorite holiday song and I will do my best to accommodate. Oh, and if you're wondering who I am, you can read a little more about me here. – Wesley Chinn

Join us for our 30th Anniversary Season

VIRTUAL EVENTS. REAL INSPIRATION.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Antiphon and "Let All the World in Every Corner Sing" from Five Mystical Songs

Voices of Ascension
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director
Kevin Cobb, Trumpet
David Enlow, Organ

Recorded live at the CANDLELIGHT CHRISTMAS CONCERT
Wednesday, December 12, 2018, The Church of the Ascension, New York City
The singers in this performance are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO.