It’s not possible to have Epiphany without this piece of music, at least not for me.  It’s possibly my favourite piece of choral music that I’ve never sung.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2dNKv48WJQ&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0] Back in my shopping-centre carolling days, we used to sing our way through the entire Oxford Book of Carols (orange and green books).  This one fell at the end of the green book. and requires a soloist and about 8 parts for the chorale, which made it a trifle impractical to do as a quartet, though we certainly tried periodically – generally when we had yet another gig in the empty and closed shopping centre at Hoppers Crossing (why they regularly hired us to sing in a closed shopping centre was a mystery to us all).  Of course, it didn’t help that the soloist is doing something totally unrelated to what the rest of the quartet is doing, so this usually ended pretty badly.

It’s a pity, really, because it’s a gorgeous piece of music.  There’s something very appealing about a chorale that is so totally separate from the solo, and yet still works…