"The Flight" by Richard Causton
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,195
    In case you missed "A Service of Nine Lessons and Carols" from Kings College Cambridge this year.


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy6bWUu-1A4&feature=share

  • David DeavyDavid Deavy
    Posts: 105
    What ever happened to music being any expression of timeless truth and beauty, if I want to see man's inhumanity to man then I would watch the news. Can't we just have one event about the Incarnation, without making it into a holiday about man.
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    Can't we just have one event about the Incarnation, without making it into a holiday about man.


    I totally agree; the Incarnation has nothing whatsoever to do with humanity.
    Thanked by 3Richard Mix Spriggo Roborgelmeister
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,195
    Which goes to show that, if you commission a work, be wary of what you might get.
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    It's interesting the works that were commissioned for the Festival that have become regulars: Part's "Bogoriditse Dyevo", Rutter's "What sweeter music", and Maxwell Davies' "One star at last", come readily to mind; also Wier's "Illumnare Jherusalem". There have been several that I wish would be used more, like Ades' "Fayrfax Carol" and Dove's "The Three Kings". All of these (with the exception of the Maxwell Davies) are texts about some aspect of the nativity, from the Annunciation to Epiphany.

    While, musically, I appreciate Causton's work, I find that it's too weighed down in the here-and-now; it is a reflection on a political issue that really has no bearing on the Nativity of Christ. Once the refugee crisis is over, it will, in all likelihood fade away, and take it's place on the library shelf with all of the other music of its ilk, like the civil-war ballads and the French Revolutionary songs, the great gobs of protest music from the '60's, Bernstein's "Mass", and so on. While we all will be still singing Howells and Darke and Britten.
    Thanked by 2CharlesW CHGiffen
  • fcbfcb
    Posts: 339
    Once the refugee crisis is over...


    Such as when? Since the advent of mechanized warfare in the 20th century and the consequent devaluing of the traditional jus in bello criterion of non-combatant immunity, there has been an ongoing crisis of refugees, and there is no end in sight. Perhaps my perspective is skewed by having a wife who has dealt with this crisis in one form or another for over twenty-five years, but it seems to me that this is hardly "a political issue that really has no bearing on the Nativity of Christ." The Nativity is not simply about God becoming flesh, but God becoming particular flesh in particular circumstances that we ignore to at our peril. Presumably God could have become man in the form of an heir to an empire, but instead chose to become man as one subject to imperial threat and persecution. The situation of those whose lot Christ chose to share is hardly something that has no bearing on his nativity.

    (I should add that I don't particularly like Causton's carol. The problem, however, is that the text is mawkish, not that the subject matter is unworthy).
    Thanked by 5Andrew_Malton Spriggo CHGiffen Richard Mix ronkrisman
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