**Note: This post has been updated with the latest mix (v.6)**
Over the years I’ve enjoyed recording new songs (as in, new ones for me), so that I can get a feel for what the song is really like -as well as giving an easy place to do experimental work on the same pieces (which is the funnest part anyway).
This year I decided I wanted to record something new, take time to patiently mix it (which I’m not very experienced in doing and often don’t do at all), and then share it. The song I chose comes from a new composition by Bob Chilcott entitled “The Bethlehem Star”. The small story behind why it was put into music by Bob Chilcott caught my spirit, and since it was also offered as a free download at the time, I decided to give it a whirl. Not being men’s music and I not being very much a soprano, I eventually transposed it (as opposed to simply singing lead an octave low which doesn’t work in this setting) and applied my own various interpretations to the song.
For this season this is my own small “sacrifice of praise”.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
On Christmas Eve 2012 Alan Greaves, a church organist from Sheffield, was attacked as he walked to church for Midnight Mass. Sadly, he died a few days later, and soon after we heard of this I happened to come across a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Bethlehem Star, that affected me in the light of this tragedy. I decided to set it in his memory. ~Bob Chilcott
LYRICS
The Bethlehem Star
Moonless darkness stands between. Past, O Past, no more be seen! But the Bethl’em star may lead meTo the sight of Him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou were lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin on Christmas day. Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1899