Monday, December 19, 2022

Jeff Buckley: Corpus Christi Carol

This can be found on Jeff Buckley's album Grace and was inspired by Benjamin Britten's setting of the carol in his choral piece A Boy Was Born. That was first performed on 23 February 1934 - the day Sir Edward Elgar died.

The Financial Times, unexpectedly, has a good article on the history of the Corpus Christi Carol:

To begin at the beginning: in late medieval England there lived a grocer by the name of Richard Hill. He kept a "commonplace book" in which he wrote down all manner of things: learned advice, pious reflections, poems, recipes, cures (a cut could apparently be treated with a pint of ale, though it’s not clear whether the ale was to be applied to the wound, or drunk), and songs, including “Corpus Christi Carol”. Only the lyric survives; Hill made no record of any music.

The recording I have of the full Britten work includes the boys of the choir from All Saints, Margaret Street. Oh how it all fits together.

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