Christmas hit since 1942

Inspired by the work of the poet W H Auden, Benjamin Britten set off for America in 1939. The two shared interests in politics, moral philosophy and the role of artist-in-society. Both had a technical mastery of their chosen medium bordering on the virtuoso. They collaborated on a number of successful co-ventures, notably his early operetta Paul Bunyan and the Hymn to Saint Cecilia. But Britten found America to have “all the faults of Europe and none of the attractions” and so, in 1942, he set sail to return to England. En route, he stopped in Nova Scotia, where he came upon The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, a collection of medieval texts. Despite the difficulty and terror of a transatlantic crossing at the height of U-boat activity, he began setting some of the poems for boys’ choir and harp. These later became the collection we know as A Ceremony of Carols.

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