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for upper voices (SSAA) a cappella
Text: English (Rt Rev Charles W Stubbs)
Duration: 2'00''
Difficulty: 4/5
Use: Christmas


Composer's note
On yesternight I saw a sight was set as a means of thanking Jo Tomlinson for promoting and recording my music with the excellent choristers of Farnham Youth Choir. Knowing that the group’s ethos is to memorise the music, I intentionally set the text in a strophic fashion in which the odd-numbered verses act as a unison chorus that later forms a round. The text is inherently rhythmical and joyous. To my mind, it could only be a 12/8 jig reminiscent of a traditional folk dance. For the work’s final exclamation, I originally added “Noel” to the text. However, singing the final letter of this word while singing a top A is unnecessarily difficult. Thus I instead set the medieval Latin term, “Noe”. By happy coincidence, this rhymes with the last two words of the sixth verse. The final chorus - harmonised for the first time and accompanied by a descant – hurriedly asks for God’s grace in these ever uncertain times so that he may “be born in us today”.

Gareth Treseder
Welsh tenor and composer Gareth Treseder studied at the University of Bristol and Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He has since been made an Honorary Associate of the RWCMD in recognition of his musical achievements. Alongside his singing career performing with the Monteverdi Choir, BBC Singers, Sonoro and St Margaret’s Westminster Abbey Choir, Gareth composes chiefly sacred choral works, several of which have been published by Boosey & Hawkes. The 2019 Three Choirs Festival saw the world premiere of his choral and orchestral setting of Ivor Gurney’s The Songs I Had. Temple Church Choir’s commission in the same year, Come, let us return to the Lord, was subsequently performed as part of their Ash Wednesday Choral Evensong broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Gareth’s Notre Père setting, written especially for St Margaret’s Westminster Abbey Choir, received its premiere the following week. Upcoming commissions include Jesu, joy of man’s desiring for Sonoro’s Choral Inspirations 2 project in 2021 and Righteousness and Equity for Temple Church Choir.