Christe redemptor omnium

My kind of carol

I am often asked about my favourite piece of music. It is a difficult question for anyone who performs on a daily basis. To say which is my favourite Christmas carol is even harder.

This year, the first carol engagement involving the Westminster Cathedral choristers is on the day after Advent Sunday, and by the time Christmas arrives, we will have sung so much associated music that it would be easier for me to produce a list of carols that I never want to hear again!

My favourite, therefore, would have to be something I can associate directly with the feast of Christmas, which seems fresh on 25 December and which is not spoilt by having been over-performed.

In choral liturgies at the cathedral, the unifying musical element is Gregorian chant. When I first heard chant on a daily basis, I sensed there was something wonderful about this ancient musical language, but did not yet have the familiarity necessary to distinguish between individual chants and their modes. Despite this, a few pieces spoke directly: over 1,000 years after their composition, they could appeal to someone whose musical tastes were attuned to more modern tonalities.

One such piece comes during Vespers on Christmas Eve, the first proper service of Christmas. After the relative simplicity of the psalm recitations, the reading and the ensuing silence, there begins a liturgical crescendo. The hymn Christe redemptor omnium leads into the Magnificat, and it was the melody of this ancient hymn that I found immediately captivating: the ambiguous sense of tonality set up in the opening phrase, the yearning arch shape at the centre and the closing phrase which repeats the first, strangely shifting the tonal centre away from the starting note.

It is indeed this sideways shifting of tonal perception produced by the chant which gives it its power to draw the contemporary listener into the realm of the sacred. I hear this hymn and am moved into a world of mystery and silence, where the message of the feast of the Incarnation becomes more vivid.