"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" Composer Felix Mendelssohn wrote the music for "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" for a cantata dedicated to Johannes Gutenberg. The tune was later matched with words written by Charles Wesley, a Methodist poet. "We Three Kings of Orient Are" "We Three Kings of...
choir, and orchestra. The main work is the nearly hour-longHodie, subtitled "A Christmas Cantata" ("Hodie" is Latin for "This Day"). Composed in 1953-54, "Hodie" sets both liturgical texts and poetry (Milton, Hardy, etc.) and displays a variety of Vaughan Williams's styles, from gau...
And let’s be honest. The dragging, slipping and sliding violins, approximately in tune, the sluggish choirs, and the lugubrious forward-pounding of the whole music–even of recordings that were well ahead of their time and musically infused (say: Karl Münchinger)–don’t hold up as acceptab...