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Brother Heinrich's Christmas, a fable set to music [1] by John Rutter, is performed by a narrator, mixed choir, and small orchestra. The bassoon plays a special part, while an oboe solo is the theme of the piece.
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, which may at the end be added explicitly as a pithy maxim or saying.
John Milford Rutter is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger and record producer, mainly of choral music.
A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm and face gestures.
The lyrics are about Heinrich Suso, a 14th-century Dominican abbot, who according to legend, notated the carol In dulci jubilo after it had been sung to him by a band of angels; he is unexpectedly aided to finish it by Sigismund, his donkey.
The Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, is a mendicant Catholic religious order founded by the Spanish priest Dominic of Caleruega in France, approved by Pope Honorius III via the Papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216. Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally carry the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and affiliated lay or secular Dominicans.
Abbot, meaning father, is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The female equivalent is abbess.
In dulci jubilo is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J.M. Neale's arrangement "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" have increased its popularity, and Robert Pearsall's 1837 macaronic translation is a mainstay of the Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols repertoire. J.S. Bach's chorale prelude based on the tune is also a traditional postlude for Christmas services.
It has been recorded by the Cambridge Singers and the City of London Sinfonia with Brian Kay and is frequently played on radio stations as part of the Christmas programming. [1]
Cambridge Singers is an English mixed voice chamber choir formed in 1981 by their director John Rutter with the primary purpose of making recordings under their own label Collegium Records.
City of London Sinfonia (CLS) is an English chamber orchestra based in London. CLS performs regularly across the city of London in venues from East London clubs to traditional Central London concert halls. CLS is Orchestra-in-Residence at the critically acclaimed Opera Holland Park and holds a residency at St Paul's Cathedral. The Orchestra has developed close links with joint venture partners in Mexico and Japan, having toured to Mexico in May 2015 and to Japan in March 2017. It is a registered charity under English law.
