Matthew Whittall’s Christmas Hath a Darkness – Four carols for Advent (SATB)

A new cycle of carols by Matthew Whittall: Christmas Hath a Darkness – Four carols for Advent!

Matthew Whittall’s cycle of carols, to the poetry of Christina Rossetti, was assembled piecemeal over a number of years, gradually acquiring a larger dramatic and harmonic arch shape as new settings were added. Whittall was attracted to Rossetti’s conflation of the dark, fallow winter landscape with that of the soul waiting for salvation. The cycle traces the long nights of watchfulness before Christmas, with the great event constantly deferred, only glimpsed periodically in different visions before the music turns inward again to contemplation.

Carols:
I. This Advent Moon (2013) SSAATTBB (+ SATBar soli); 5 min.
II. Earth grown old (2016) SSAATTBB; 5 min 30 sec.
III. In the bleak mid-winter (2007); S solo+SATB (div.); 3 min.
IV. Love came down at Christmas (2016); SSAATTBB; 3 min.

Read and listen more about the cycle at http://www.mwhittall.com/compositions/christmas-hath-a-darkness-four-carols-for-advent-2007-2016/