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About the Composer

Carol Barnett

Carol Barnett writes audacious and engaging music. She is known for breaking the mold with meter changes, differing tonal centers, unusual instrument combinations, and her love of fast tempi. Despite these typical thumbprints, Barnett’s works are diverse, uncovering the needs of each piece and each text with her characteristic integrity. Carol’s varied catalog includes works...

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Carol Barnett (Beady Eyes)

Christmas Eve, Bells

Name: Christmas Eve, Bells
SKU: BE-001
Availability: InStock

Carol Barnett

Ten dissonant voice parts chime the wintry church bells.

Choral

mixed choir

a cappella

Difficulty: 4

Duration: 3-5 min.

BE-001

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SSSAAATTBB a cappella

In a new take on the Christmas spirit, Carol Barnett takes the first three stanzas from Alfred, Lord
Tennyson’s In Memoriam, canto XXVIII, and paints a provincial soundscape of a December English
countryside, bleak and beautiful in its heavy snowfall. Imagine the voices as bells ringing the changes, exploring the variations of their tunes, a background hum always present in their combined overtones, all in service to a sense of wistful nostalgia.

Composer’s Notes

“Christmas Eve, Bells” was written in 1991 for the Dale Warland Singers’ Echoes of Christmas concert.

– Carol Barnett

Text

The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

from In Memoriam
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

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