Currier & Ives
Sunday, December 7, 2025, 3:30pm
Monday, December 8, 2025, 7:30pm
Christ United Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC
Program Order, Texts & Translations (PDF)
Season Playbill, Directions and More
Program Notes from Artistic Director Welborn Young
Happy Holidays! Like all events or “seasons” of our lives, there exists a soundtrack that we embrace. The Holiday season soundtrack is one of the most beloved. There is a song for every emotion and every holiday event. Recently I heard that the music we learn or grow up with acts as a magnet that, upon hearing in later years evokes emotions, sensations such as remembered fragrances, or the touch of a loved one now absent from our lives. Such is the power of music and, in my case, specifically vocal choral music.
I chose the concert title, “Currier & Ives,” because this title has a place in history and was a holiday reference point in my family’s traditions along with Norman Rockwell. I associate comfort, peace, and kindness with these references. My process of choosing titles for this concert has the emotional lens that the two references evoke in me even though the music may not have a direct relationship to either Currier and Ives or Rockwell. It is the emotion and the sensitivity of the composer’s settings that influenced my choices. Although the “Firestone” Christmas albums are no longer available except in antique stores, they existed when I was very young and I rediscovered them in my late teens. The mixture of classical, light-classical, and arrangements of popular secular tunes were a feature of these albums. I am sure that my selections for this concert are heavily influenced by my looking-back and recalling my mother’s exuberance in decorating and baked goods, the hug of my grandparents, the joyous early – I do mean very early in my case – rousing the family to open presents. I hope you get as much joy, solace, and overall feelings of comfort from this concert.
I am pleased to open Currier & Ives with a composition by one of our singers, William (Bill) Snedden.
The Darkest Midnight In December has now become a favored piece for me. Snedden introduces the melody with a solo violin which is then repeated by a soprano soloist and piano. The efficiency of Snedden’s compositional style, his understanding of the voice, and his love of choral music is reflected in the work.
You will notice that classical, light-classical, and arrangements of carols make up the first half of the concert. Three works Venez mes enfant, The Holly and the Ivy, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, and I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In are carol arrangements. The text and the melody origins of Venez mes enfant, an arrangement by Canadian composer Donald Patriquin, are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German. The 1794 secular tune “wie reizend, wie wonnig” (how charming, how pleasant) by Johann Abraham Peter Schulz and the text, “Ihr Kinderlein, kommet,” (Oh, come, little children) 1798 written by an unnamed Catholic priest and Christoph von Schmid, appeared together for the first time in 1832. The character of this arrangement never varies from the light and buoyant opening verse.
Rutter’s arrangement of the 1911 British carol The Holly and The Ivy is a perfect vehicle illustrating Rutter’s treatment of musical line and the harmonic balance underneath. The references of Holly and Ivy require a deep dive into ancient British literature and storytelling. As expressed in the Christmas carol, the holly symbolizes Christ and the Ivy symbolizes Mary. Although there are many different melodies for this carol, Rutter’s setting utilizes the melody which we are most familiar with that was popularized in 1909.
John Elliot Gardner’s arrangement of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is a rhythmic and mixed-meter joy to learn and to sing. Although it appears in a collection of “Ancient and Modern” carols published in 1833, the origins of this carol are surely much older. There are numerous arrangements of the traditional melody. Gardner’s setting feels fresh and unexpected in its melodic and rhythmic elements. Dancing is how I would describe this setting.
If you are not familiar with Mack Wilberg’s choral arrangements, then you are in for a treat. I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In has all the hallmarks of Wilberg’s composing: a fairly simple introduction and first verse; verses for paired duets, usually soprano and alto versus tenor and bass; a cumulative building throughout the work to an explosive ending; and, of course, key-shifts. In this particular setting he drives the choir a little crazy about two-thirds through the work where he intensifies the changing key by introducing accidentals every second measure along with some staggered entrances in an imitative gesture.
The late Stephen Paulus was at one time the composer in residence for the Dale Warland Singers. Two of his compositions, How Far Is It To Bethlehem and A Savior From On High, appeared on Bel Canto Company holiday concerts in the earlier part of my tenure with BCC. I absolutely love these two works. There is a sentimental aspect to Paulus’s writing that touches me. The melodic and harmonic content are quite accessible but, at times, infused with unexpected alterations that continually draw your ear to it. A hallmark of his writing is his ability to build a harmonic palette that is alternately rich and simple.
I have known André Thomas since 2000. We met at a national ACDA conference. He was the Director Of Choral Studies at Florida State University and I was just beginning my tenure at UNCG as an assistant professor. We met onstage in 2022 when I conducted Dan Forrest’s Jubilate Deo for the President’s concert at Southern Regional ACDA in Raleigh. He conducted Wilberg’s Come Thou Fount which I had prepared for him. This was the first conference with live performance coming out of COVID. His arrangement of Go Where I Send Thee is, for me, a fresh approach to the African-American spiritual Children, Go Where I Send Thee. Thomas infuses this tune with a heavy gospel style that brings a new life to an older standard.
Heralded as Sergei Rachmaninoff’s crowning achievement, The All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 (1915) is in fifteen movements. Ten of those movements are based on Russian Orthodox chant. The rich texture and expansive ranges and dynamics utilized throughout the a cappella Vigil exemplifies Russian choral liturgical music at the beginning of the twentieth-century. Bogoroditse Devo (Ave Maria) is the sixth movement. The rounded large compositional structure boasts many exceptional moments. For me however, the extended middle section in which the Altos in two-parts move the text forward in a lovely duet and the Sopranos and Tenors in unison at a softer dynamic and a slower rhythmic declamation envelop the Altos. The stunning moment is toward the end of the large section when the choir is asked to crescendo from their softest dynamics to much louder dynamics. Rachmaninoff chooses that moment to re-introduce the Bass section. It is a truly glorious explosion of sound. I’ve chosen to have the singers perform this work in Russian because the truest sense of the grandeur of the work occurs in the beautiful setting of the vowels.
The first three titles on the second half of the program were written between 1942 and 1948. Each one was written in the summer prior to their first performances. Lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jules Styne collaborated during the summer of 1945 during a heatwave and wrote Let It Snow! Untroubled by the winter snow storm, the song’s characters are enjoying popcorn, cuddles, and the opportunity to relax. The song has entered the Christmas holiday cannon of music even though there is no mention of the holidays in this song. White Christmas, an Irving Berlin song composed for the movie Holiday Inn (1942) won an academy award and spent 11 weeks at the top of the Billboard charts. It returned to the top of the Billboard charts again in 1943 and 1944. Leroy Anderson conceived of Sleigh Ride in July 1946 during a heatwave. The song was not completed until 1948. The first performance was May of 1948 by the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Pinkzebra is the pseudonym for a successful music producer and composer. Pinkzebra’s December In My Hometown is a gentle, somewhat wistful ballad quietly extolling the many holiday features of “my hometown” including lights, snow, kind and friendly people. The beautiful unhurried melodic lines and its text create an atmosphere of longing to slow your holiday “roll” and live in the beauty of the moment.
The fifteenth-century French carol Noël Nouvolet is the melodic source for Sing We Now Of Christmas. This brief arrangement by Fred Prentice rapidly expands the singers vocal ranges and dynamics as the choir concludes with a final statement of “Sing we all noel!”
I promised myself that I would never program the song The Twelve Days Of Christmas. Well…I lied to myself. The Ian Humphries arrangement is brief, elegant, and beautifully structured. It also has lovely surprises that I will not give away here.
Dan Forrest calls The Work Of Christmas (2014) a lovely benediction for choir. Forrest sets Howard Thurman’s poem in a rounded large structural form. This work demonstrates a reserve almost inward looking Forrest. The opening five lines of the poem establishes a post-holiday timeframe and posits that after the festivities are done, now the work of Christmas begins: action items, to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among brothers, to make music from the heart. A lovely sentiment set in a most lovely restrained manner.