Blessed be that maid Mary - David Willcocks (arr.), John Rutter, Cambridge Singers
2. 'Blessed be that maid Mary' David Willcocks (arr.)
From the album ‘The Cambridge Singers Christmas Album’
Composer David Willcocks (arr.)
Conductor John Rutter
Choir The Cambridge Singers
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Blessed be that maid Mary
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 (c. 1590), 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.
LYRICS:
Blessed be that maid Mary;
Born he was of her body;
Very God ere time began,
Born in time the Son of Man.
Eya! Jesus hodie
Natus est de virgine.
In a manger of an ass
Jesu lay and lulled was;
Born to die upon the tree
Pro peccante homine.
Sweet and blissful was the song
Chanted of the angel throng,
‘Peace on earth’, Alleluya.
In excelsis Gloria.
Fare three kings from far-off land,
Incense, gold and myrrh in hand;
In Beth’lem the Babe they see,
Stelle ducti lumine.
Make we merry on this fest,
In quo Christus natus est;
On this child I pray you call,
To assoil and save us all.
English traditional melody arranged by David Willcocks
Words by G. R. Woodward (1848–1934)
The Cambridge Singers Christmas Album
John Rutter selects some of his favourite Christmas carols, old and new, from classic Cambridge Singers recordings, including several of his own arrangements, closing with Vaughan Williams' majestic 'Fantasia on Christmas Carols'.
John Rutter, English composer and conductor, is associated with choral music throughout the world. His recordings with the Cambridge Singers (the professional chamber choir he set up in 1983) have reached a wide global audience, many of them featuring his own music in definitive versions. Among John’s best-known choral works are Gloria, Requiem, Magnificat, Mass of the Children, and Visions, together with many church anthems, choral songs and Christmas carols.
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