Clare Stevens enjoys the finest recordings of a Christmas masterpiece that came into this world in quite the most unlikely of circumstances
Building a library
The work
Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols vividly evokes the spirit of a traditional Christmas. So vividly, in fact, that it comes as a surprise to discover that it was inspired as much by serendipity as by the composer’s creative imagination, and that the initial draft was made not in the depths of winter but in early spring 1942, and under the most difficult of circumstances.
Britten and his partner Peter Pears were on their way back to England after three years in the US and Canada, having originally left the UK in frustration at the lack of enthusiasm for Britten’s music in his native country. On the outbreak of World War II they had tried to return immediately, but their applications for visas were delayed. Eventually they set off, on a Swedish cargo vessel called the MS Axel Johnson. After leaving New York it called in at Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the passengers were allowed some time ashore. Browsing in a bookshop, Britten picked up a copy of The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett; poems from the anthology formed the basis of a carol sequence written, as he later said, to alleviate the boredom of the voyage.
‘Boring’ is probably not the word most people would use to describe a transatlantic crossing in which they were running the gauntlet of German U-boats. The ship’s funnel caught fire and they were separated from their convoy. Pears described the ‘miserable’ discomfort of their cabin, situated ‘very near the huge provisions Ice box … the smell & heat were intolerable, & … people seemed to whistle up and down the corridor all day’. Despite these distractions, Britten was able to complete the first draft of what would become one of his most famous and successful works.
The other element of serendipity was that his reading material for the voyage included two harp manuals, intended to help him compose a concerto for Edna Phillips, principal harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The concerto never materialised, but the manuals inspired the unusual harp accompaniment of A Ceremony of Carolsand the beautiful solo interlude that forms the centrepiece of the work. It is based on the plainsong ‘Hodie Christus natus est’, taken from the Magnificat Antiphon for the second Vespers of the Nativity, which Bri
