Description
Unfortunately, the English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) never enjoyed particularly good health. It was poor eyesight caused by neuritis that rendered him unfit for active service in World War One. It was also on account of his health that in 1917 (incidentally the year he completed the orchestration of The Planets) he and his wife moved from London to the pretty Essex village, Thaxted, to escape the foggy air that affected his breathing. There, Holst was very much involved in the local church and he also founded a series of Whitsun music festivals in which students from Morley College and St Paul’s Girls’ School (where he taught) performed together with locals. Perhaps the carol for sopranos and accompaniment A Dream of Christmas was written for the festival?
Like in many of his carols, Holst uses words from Mary Segar’s Medieval Anthology. Here Holst uses anonymous 15th century lyrics, which begin:
The other night I saw a sight, all in my sleep: Mary, that may, she sang: Lulay, and sore did weep.
CHORUS: “Ah my dear! ah my dear Son!” said Lady Mary, “Ah my dear! Kiss Thy mother, Jesu, with a laughing cheer.”
A Dream of Christmas is a gently lilting and beautifully expressive carol. Holst uses the Dorian mode in the first half of the carol which makes way (when the text mentions Christ) to a brighter, major feel in Mixolydian mode in the second half.
