A carol for Christmas (Charles Villiers Stanford)

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• (Posted 2024-03-12)  CPDL #79499:     

Editor: David Anderson (submitted 2024-03-12).   Score information: Letter, 12 pages, 709 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes:

General Information

Title: A carol for Christmas
Composer: Charles Villiers Stanford
Lyricist: Edmund Bolton
Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong, Carol

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1897 Boosey & Co.
Description: Six Elizabethan Pastorals [set 3], Opus 67, No. 1.

The text is sacred, but written and published as part of the set of secular partsongs.

Original text and translations

English text

Sweet Music, sweeter far
Than any song is sweet:
Sweet Music heavenly rare,
Mine ears, (O peers!) doth greet.
Yon gentle flocks, whose fleeces, pearl’d with dew,
Resemble heaven, whom golden drops make bright:
Listen, O listen, now;— O not to you
Our pipes make sport to shorten weary night:—
But voices most divine
Make blissful harmony:
Voices that seem to shine,
For what else clears the sky?
Tunes can we hear, but not the singers see;
The tune’s divine, and so the singers be.

Lo! how the firmament
Within an azure fold
The flock of stars hath pent,
That we might them behold.
Yet from their beams proceedeth not this light,
Nor can their crystals such reflection give.
What then doth make the elements so bright?
The heavens are come down on earth to live.

But hearken to the song:
“Glory to glory’s King!
And peace all men among!”
These queristers do sing.
Angels they are, as also (Shepherds) He,
Whom in our fear we do admire to see.

“Let not amazement blind
Your souls,” (said he) “annoy:
To you and all mankind,
My message bringeth joy.
For lo! the world’s great Shepherd now is born,
A blesséd Babe, an Infant full of power:
After long night, up-risen is the morn,
Renowning Bethlem in the Saviour.
Sprung is the perfect day,
By prophets seen afar:
Sprung is the mirthful May,
Which Winter cannot mar.”
In David’s city doth this Sun appear,
Clouded in flesh;— yet, Shepherds! sit we here?