Where is this stupendous stranger?

Notes

Christopher Smart’s Christmas poem deserves to be better known. Throughout, it reflects on nature’s Christmas decor in a style similar to John Clare and then switches to the figure of a baby’s vulnerability. Musically, in this setting composed for Chester Bach Singers, much of the decorative ‘tinsel’ is provided by the organ accompaniment, with the choral lines alternating between forthright statements of the text, often shared between upper and lower voices in pairs, and more subdued, reflective harmonic passages.