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Track(s) taken from CSCD512

Blessed be that maid Mary

composer
Anonymous - traditional
traditional English melody
arranger
Sir David Valentine Willcocks (1919-2015)
author of text
George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934)

The Cambridge Singers, John Rutter (conductor)
Recording details: April 1993
Great Hall, University College School, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Jillian White
Engineered by Campbell Hughes
Release date: September 2003
Total duration: 2 minutes 32 seconds

Cover artwork: The Incarnation (12th century).
Stained glass window in Chartres Cathedral / © Sonia Halliday Photographs
 

Reviews

'John Rutter brings conviction to this robust reading and Stephen Varcoe adds much to the emotional dimension. The programme of carols is an attractive plus' (Gramophone)
As with many carols and hymns, Blessed be that maid Mary, which first appeared in Wood and Woodward’s Cowley Carol Book of 1902, was an editorially-arranged marriage between a melody and a text of quite separate origins. The melody is from William Ballet’s Lute Book (c1590), and the text is a modernized version by Woodward of a fifteenth-century original from the Sloane Manuscript. David Willcocks’s setting was written for the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and was first published in Carols for Choirs in 1961.

from notes by John Rutter © 2003

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