blog.sinden.org

Sinden.org maintains two carol service spreadsheets, one for the famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Christmas at King's College, Cambridge, and one for the slightly less famous Advent Carol Service at St. John's College, Cambridge.

The spreadsheet the St. John's Advent Carol Service has just been updated with the music and lessons for this year's service.

After a couple years with rather radical changes, it was nice to see the service settle back to a more familiar rhythm. In the last two years, the first and final hymns have been changed from their usual pattern ("O come, O come, Emmanuel" and "Lo! he comes with clouds descending").

The traditional four pairs of lessons (Hebrew Bible and New Testament in each section) were mostly changed in 2023, but were restored the following year and remain in place for this year's service.

Many of us will be familiar with "Zion, at thy shining gates" arranged by George Guest, as found in the Oxford Advent for Choirs book. It has not previously been sung at this service, but this year, it makes an appearance before the first lesson.

Also new to this service this year: "I waited for the Lord" by Felix Mendelssohn, and A hymn of St. Columba by Edward Picton-Turbervill (a former organ scholar at St. John's). The commissioned carol, sung at the end of the service, is Nolo mortem peccatoris by Errollyn Wallen.

Two pieces that have made a long-expected (see what I did there?) return to this service are Benjamin Britten's A hymn to the Virgin (last sung in 2004) and the Magnificat from the Herbert Howells "St. John's" Service (last sung in 2006).

Now, the only question is how to actually listen to the service. Listeners outside the UK will be very unhappy with this link from the BBC.

Labels: Advent, Britten, Guest, Howells, Picton-Turbervill, Wallen