"Fit us for heaven to live with Thee there" is Gnosticism.

Last one. This is one of mine again.

A bit from the opening of verse 2 of Silent night, where the melody is in the tenor with the bass in harmony, and the soprano and alto doing a nice overlapping sustained thing above it.

Have a good Christmas if that's your thing. Have a nice Wednesday in any case.

We move for the first time away from my own arrangements. Here's a snippet of Bethlehem Down, words by Bruce Blunt and music by Peter Warlock. Both are exquisite and unimprovable.

The picture is from the end of the 3rd and 4th verses.

Oops it's Tuesday already how did that happen?

Here is the end of an obscure but good American carol called 'Ye nations all, on you I call' by William Walker (1809-75).

It's in E minor and 6/8, and goes fairly fast. I wrote this about it a few years ago:

The original carol tells the whole of the Christmas story in eight verses; I have judiciously edited it down to three verses, to fit better into a traditional Nine Lessons and Carols service. The last verse is a canon in three parts, the third taken by the organ, plus a secret slow one in the pedal part.

Sunday snippet.

This is the last refrain from Ding dong! merrily on high, the carol of which I posted part as the very first snippet.

If there were more days before Christmas I'd probably end up posting the whole carol in pieces, jigsaw style.

I'm quite pleased (some British understatement at work there) with this. I crammed all of my additions in (Big Ben chimes, the pealing of bells borrowed from Purcell's Rejoice in the Lord alway), and got more bells into the tenor part in the last two bars. The descant worked out very nicely (except for a barely noticeable parallel octave with the alto). Oh, and the bass part carries on the scale of bells from the tenor part, down to the final note.

The ?tenth snippet.

Today's arrangement was done because I found the time signature arrangement of the original maddening, and wanted a more straightforward one. You'll need to compare them, but for instance it starts with a three-note upbeat and then a single 3/4 bar before changing to 4/4, and it doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, I also did a bit of retranslating (giving up on rhyming in the baritone part) and so on.

The chorus sing the hymn Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, a star-related choice, and Cornelius weaves his solo melody in and around that in a very pleasing manner. All in all, four stars.

Resumption of (now intermittent) carol snippets.

Verse 5 of O come, o come Emanuel. Arrangement for SATB and piano: the choir unison in the verses (good to have an easy carol in a Nine Lessons and Carols) but in four parts in each refrain (not shown).

Because of the unison singing, I gave the exciting last-verse differences to the piano.