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A Festival of Lessons & Carols featuring Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols
Sunday, Dec.14, 10:00 am
Please join us on Sunday, December 14 at 10:00 am. for First Congregational Church’s annual Festival of Lessons and Carols, a beloved tradition from England wherein God’s word is proclaimed and contemplated in a special sequence of readings, prayers, poetry, choral anthems and congregational carols and hymns.
The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is most affectionately connected to King’s College in Cambridge, England, where it has graced the Chapel on Christmas Eve since 1918.
- When: Sunday, December 14, 2025, at 10:00 am
- Where: The Sanctuary at 21 Church Street, Winchester, MA, 01890.
About Benjamin Britten and A Ceremony of Carols
This year, our Lessons and Carols service highlights the music of Benjamin Britten by presenting
The work has a storied history. Benjamin Britten wrote the piece in 1942 while crossing the Atlantic aboard a Swedish cargo ship. He actually intended to use the month-long voyage to complete what would become his well-known Hymn to St. Cecilia, but the early sketches were confiscated by customs authorities who feared that the music was in fact a secret code. Britten left England at the outset of the war in 1939 and headed for the United States, where his fame grew quickly, and where, it must be noted, he was unlikely to be drafted into the British army. After several years abroad, he and his partner, the acclaimed tenor Peter Pears, returned home, embarking on this long sea voyage.
While in port in Nova Scotia, Britten came upon a little book, The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, which became the source of the “carols.” The carols are largely the product of 15th- and 16th-century writers, most of whom are anonymous. Britten maintained their authentically unique flavor by setting the original Middle English texts. He had been studying the harp with a view to writing a concerto for that unique instrument. It was to be another twenty-seven years before he wrote his challenging Suite for harp.
A Ceremony of Carols consists of eight polyphonic settings; these eight carols are bookended by statements of the Gregorian chant “Hodie Christus Natus Est” (“Christ is born today”), and midway through the set is an astounding interlude for harp solo that features this same plainchant tune. The carols themselves show a remarkable diversity of styles, from the jubilant exultations of “Wolcum Yole” and “Deo Gracias,” to the pastoral and lyrical “There is no rose” and “Balulalow,” to the martial urgency of “This Little Babe” and its ever-expanding canon. The piece is one haunting, vibrant, gorgeous, lovely, and meditative whole, marked by concision of composition and a rich, sophisticated harmonic palate. A truly beautiful and enduring canonical work.
About Sorana Scarlat, harpist:
Sorana is a prizewinner of the Bucharest Music Competition and Romanian Music Interpretation Contest. She was appointed principal harpist with Ploiesti Philharmonic Orchestra, Romania, and she spent several years playing with National Philharmonic Orchestra and National Radio Orchestra in Bucharest, Romania. Sorana moved to the United States in 1996 to collaborate with Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Mobile Symphony Orchestra, Symphony of Southwest Texas, Gulf Coast Symphony, Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, and the Chinese National Orchestra.
She currently lives in New Hampshire and performs solo and with various orchestras in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. Among them are the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra, Brown University Symphony Orchestra, University of New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, and the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra.
Tags: Lessons and Carols
