Audio of Orchestration/Choir Performing 'See Amid the Winter's Snow'
  • JacobFlahertyJacobFlaherty
    Posts: 328
    Dear Forum Members,

    I just wanted to share with you a particularly nice recording of See Amid the Winter's Snow performed during the pre-Christmas Morning Mass caroling this year at the FSSP Church of All Saints in Minneapolis. For that Mass we had 1 Flute, 2 Clarinets, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Violins I and II, Viola, and Cello. It was recorded on a single microphone placed perhaps too close to the Trumpets (the balance was better live) and the choir placed behind the orchestra, but all in all it sounds pretty good and worked out even better in real life.

    I just love this carol and the sweetness of it. I tried to articulate the words in how I orchestrated it. Verse 3 was fun in that I added pizzicato in the strings as the text speaks of 'joyful news'. Verse 4's words speak of 'wondrous sight', causing the strings to play arpeggiated sixteenth notes to drive home a sense of being whipped into something 'other-worldly'.

    Anyway, I hope you enjoy. God bless your week! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLJ1T2w0V_k
    Thanked by 6CHGiffen Incardination chonak M. Jackson Osborn Patricia Cecilia cmb
  • AndrewSteinerPiano
    Posts: 62
    It's quite lovely! Are you going to share the arrangement or do you publish?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,366
    This is one of my very favourite Christmas carols, one which, inexplicably, is rarely heard in our churches. I've done it many times. As a rule I don't like orchestrated accompaniments to church music - there always seems to be an inescapable element of schmaltz to most of them. I prefer the Willcocks (I think it is) setting in 'Carols for Choirs'.
Add a Comment