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SATB and piano/organ. Part of our series: “The House of Christmas” which includes three settings of poems by G.K. Chesterton.

Duration: 3 mins 45s.

G. K. Chesterton was a great traveller and on his wanderings, a friend to everyone he met. In his own house, he was famed for his warmth and hospitality. It is not surprising, then that The Inn was for him almost a spiritual symbol. In all of my settings of his poems I have tried to convey the sense of a yearning journey of life coupled with the joy of finding something thought lost forever: we travel to a place that, if we are truthful, we never really left.

In The Wise Men I hoped to put over the idea of something lost but very close, and the steady, measured pace of the approach to the stable at Bethlehem.

A four track EP of new christmas carols is now released on Air Edel Records. It features SATB settings of three texts by GK Chesterton (The House of Christmas, The Wise Men, A Child of the Snows) and a new setting of the 16th Century Scottish carol Balulalow. The carols, each receiving their first public performances during December 2016 are produced and mixed by Abbey Road engineer Jonathan Allen and performed by a virtuoso quartet of Eloise Irving, Amy Lyddon, Benedict Hymas and Simon Whiteley, accompanied by pianist Mark Dowd. The EP is available across a number of digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify!

Text

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all the labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but truth.

Go humbly … it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(… We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.