On ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’…
So Christmas is upon us once again, though unless you live in some incredibly remote corner of the globe (or New Zealand…) it is a Christmas like no other: the most bittersweet and introspective that all but the very old will ever have experienced. Here in the UK, festive plans have suddenly changed, families can’t meet, there are increased political uncertainties and Christmas cheer is in desperately short supply. But the show must go on as they say (though part of the obvious problems this year is that the show just hasn’t gone on…) and no worldwide pandemic and looming national disaster is going to stop me writing about Christmas music! That would just be the final straw!
This year I’ve decided to write about multiple settings of one text rather than an individual piece, and that text is Christina Rosetti’s tender and wistful ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ that has become beloved to many across the world, either through the original poem or through the countless settings that composers have made in the last 150 years. Why choose this, I hear you say screamed across the Internet! Well, from my limited awareness of choirs, choristers and organists, it appears that there is an ongoing debate as to which is the most sensitive, thoughtful and ultimately the best setting of Rosetti’s verse – I’m not hoping to resolve that debate in this blog, but I do hope to add a few words and maybe some other options should discerning music-lovers want to stray further than the two titans of bleak mid-winters.
It goes without saying that these two titans are Gustav Holst and Harold Darke, both from roughly the same generation, though one distinctly more famous than the other. Holst is known across the world for The Planets (and its most renowned appendage ‘I vow to thee my country’) and a host of colourful, dramatic and original orchestral scores; Darke is known for…well…mainly In the Bleak Midwinter and not a lot else (though church-music aficionados have a reasonable claim for some pretty good service music as well)! Their two settings of Rosetti’s poems appeared within three years of each other (Holst in 1906 and Darke in 1909) and both have firmly found their place in church and concert repertoire, with both arguably safely in the wider public’s musical conscious as well. Both are staples of high-profile Christmas events such as the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, both are in the long-standing OUP Carols for Choirs anthologies, both are performed from the top to the bottom of the country at many festive occasions (though sadly, less frequently this year).
So why the debate?
A good question. Well, for a start it should be said that the two settings are quite similar – both are gentle, sympathetic and wholly appropriate for Rosetti’s text, they show plenty of compositional craft and technique to account for the poem’s irregular metre and they don’t ask too much of choir (or congregation) who might be presented with this Christmas offering. Perhaps it is the similarities that causes debate – the differences between the two (in my opinion) are nuanced: a change of harmony here, a more prominent interval there, not a lot to get too hot under the collar about. For my mind, the Holst just about shades it – there is a simplicity and directness that just about puts it above the Darke: it can be butchered by singers of any ability (or level of sobriety) and it still retains its inherent tenderness. Although similarly poignant, the Darke has a slightly higher level of ambition that places it above the mass-carol-singing majority – a beautiful setting without question, but not as haunting when sung by drunken revelers as much as by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.
But what about these other settings you mentioned?
Well, just because there are two fabulous settings from the Edwardian era doesn’t mean that other composers shouldn’t seek to put their own stamp on Rosetti’s words. Although more recent settings haven’t scaled the heights of Holst or Darke, you can’t deny the originality of Britten’s setting in his larger work A Boy was Born (1933), creepy and un-festive as it might sound. More contemporary offerings tend towards the schmaltzy and saccharine (and I’ve heard some awful modern settings…) rather than the simple wonder present in their predecessors. One setting that does stand out as blending the aesthetic of Holst with more contemporary sounds and techniques is Richard Allain’s from 2012. Allain’s setting somehow manages to strike a balance between the old and new, the simple and the complex and the direct and the distant – the beautiful shimmering modality of the piece adding a new response to Rosetti’s words, but fully aware of the tenderness of the poet’s fragile Christmas scene.
So there you go, try not to get too worried about whether Holst is better than Darke, or whether the country will still be gripped by COVID in 2021 (easy for me to say) – go and have a quick listen to Richard Allain’s setting of In the Bleak Midwinter and everything will just be a little bit better. And have a merry, merry Christmas and a truly happy New Year. PAC