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Festival Introduction
By Michael Barone
December 24, 1998
In Cambridge, England, it is three o'clock, but whatever time it may be wherever you are, won't you pause and join us here? For the past eight decades, the musicians and clergy of King's College Chapel have invited us to join them on a little island of calm and beauty in what too often is a boisterous, even cruel world.
In 1918, the then-new dean of King's Chapel, 34-year-old Eric Milner-White, broke with tradition, and in doing so, created one. He wanted to try something innovative and beyond the standard liturgy of the Church of England. So he wove together scripture and song, called on readers of various ages from school and town, and made up this truly magical progression which carries us from prophecy to fulfillment, from Old Testament foretelling to a birthday celebration.
And this is the 80th birthday of that Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's, the 70th anniversary of BBC broadcasts, and the 20th year of our broadcasts in the United States.
Stephen Cleobury, choirmaster at King's Chapel since 1982, has selected today's music which not only celebrates the Christmas season, but also honors previous King's chapel musicians with arrangements and compositions by Boris Ord, Philip Ledger, Sir David Willcocks, and Harold Darke.
Today's service will include a new piece by Giles Swayne, Winter Solstice Carol, featuring a flute, this being the first time that King's has commissioned music using accompaniment by anything other than the organ for this service.
The King's Chapel Choir, an ensemble established by the decree of King Henry VI, now is comprised of 16 boys between the ages of 8 and 13 years, and 14 undergraduate men from the College's enrollment. They sing daily services here during school term, and are no less astounding on those occasions than they promise to be today, but today they will be heard by so many more of us.
As always, the chapel is full to overflowing. And around the world, millions upon millions are by their radios, as you are now, awaiting that moment, in candle-lit stillness, when a lone child's voice begins us on our way with a song set Once in Royal David's City.
From King's College Chapel, in Cambridge, England, in celebration of Christmas, A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
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