Walker, Lucy - The Christmas Life (SATB a cappella)

for mixed voices (SATB with divisi) a cappella
Text: English (Wendy Cope)
Duration: c3 minutes
Difficulty: 3/5
Use: Christmas

The poet, Wendy Cope, conjures a heartwarming image of Christmas in the home. This setting of her comforting poem translates this imagery into a classic Christmas choral sound - a simple, memorable tune, accompanied by mellow, warm harmonies, and a natural lilt as the metre alternates between triple and quadruple time. In the second verse, which is filled with references to light, each voice part expands, up to a blooming chord on 'shine', and this section features more exploratory harmonic inflection while retaining the original melody. The final verse begins with a return to the opening music in the lower voices, before growing into a richly scored ending. 

Text
Bring in a tree, a young Norwegian spruce,
Bring hyacinths that rooted in the cold.
Bring winter jasmine as its buds unfold –
Bring the Christmas life into this house.

Bring red and green and gold, bring things that shine,
Bring candlesticks and music, food and wine.
Bring in your memories of Christmas past.
Bring in your tears for all that you have lost.

Bring in the shepherd boy, the ox and ass,
Bring in the stillness of an icy night,
Bring in a birth, of hope and love and light.
Bring the Christmas life into this house.

'The Christmas Life' by Wendy Cope (© Wendy Cope, 2017) with permission of United Agents (www.unitedagents.co.uk) on behalf of Wendy Cope

Lucy Walker
Lucy Walker is an award-winning composer, pianist and music educator from the North-East of England, currently based in Cambridge. Since completing her postgraduate studies at Gonville & Caius College, where she was a Choral Scholar, in 2021, Lucy has received numerous high-profile commissions. Composing highlights for Lucy so far include her first BBC Radio 3 commission, sung by the BBC Singers, in celebration of International Women’s Day; composing an introit for the first ever Evensong broadcast by the Choir of Pembroke College, Cambridge; and, most recently, being appointed Composer-in-Residence with St Martin’s Voices, at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London. Lucy’s works have been frequently broadcast on national radio, featured on commercial recordings, and are gaining popularity in performance across Europe and the US. Lucy is passionate about making music, especially choral music, accessible and inclusive, and her compositions aim to reflect this mission.