(1998/99)
Duration: 4 minutes
1) Trebles/Sopranos and Organ
2) Soprano and Piano
1) first performed by the Bedford School Chapel Choir, cond. Bruce Grindlay, 12 December 1999, Bedford School Chapel
2) first performed by Charlotte Newstead/Anthony Pinell, 14.12.98, Colston Hall, Bristol
Programme Note
The melody on which this piece was based was composed by my sister, Ro c.1978 when she was about 10, for a Nationwide carol competition. The tune stayed in my head for years afterwards and when in 1998 I was asked by the soprano Charlotte Newstead to compose a carol for the concert she was taking part in later that year, I decided to base it on my sister’s melody, using the carol text, A Babe is Born all of a May. The carol was first performed in 1998 as part of the Bristol Evening Post Christmas Carol Concert at the Colston Hall, Bristol, and my sister flew over from Ireland to hear her carol melody performed for the first time in front of an audience of 2000. (She later told me that I had remembered the tune wrongly!) I composed a revised version of the carol for the trebles of Bedford School Chapel Choir in November 1999.