The Music Plays On — Britten Ceremony of Carols

In 1942, while traveling by boat from the United States to England, the British composer, Benjamin Britten, wrote a series of nine songs for three-part children’s choir and harp based on predominantly Middle English Christmas poems from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett. They were originally intended as separate songs, but Britten would later tie them together with a processional…