Sussex Carol - English Traditional
This year has once again been very busy with the arranging and recording of a second volume of Christmas carols. The album is entitled ‘It Came Upon The Midnight Clear and other carols’ and is available from our website as well as on itunes, CD baby and Amazon in time for Christmas 2011.
Deciding which carols to include in this second volume was quite tricky at times because many of the most popular ones had already been included in ‘I Saw Three Ships’, yet there were so many which we felt deserved to be recorded as part of the second volume. In the end, this collection is in many ways more varied and interesting than the first with carols from many different countries.
The first track is the wonderfully fresh ‘Sussex Carol’, so named as Ralph Vaughan Williams collected it from a lady near Horsham in Sussex. It was first published in 1919 and has since become established as one of the most popular of all carols, arranged for many different combinations.
In order to keep the spirit of the original melody I’ve given it a counter melody which helps join the various sections together as well as occuring simultaneously with the main melody. The whole thing has a real sense of vibrant energy which skips along, getting the disc off to a lively, celebratory start!
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