O Holy Child of Bethlehem

So I’m now one of “those guys.” As a singer, I would complain when I saw a composer reusing past material that they wrote. As a composer, I would complain about composers repurposing old pieces for new projects. And now I’ve joined the club.

Way back when, I wrote a piece for Anton Armstrong and the St. Olaf Choir called “The Darkling Thrush,” on a poem by Thomas Hardy. It was one of my first pieces for mixed choir, and I was pretty happy (still am) with the melodies I wrote for that piece. One day near Christmas, a decade later, I found myself humming the melody in the car, but for some reason I substituted the words for “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” And it worked! The text stress, the cadence, all of it! I decided on the spot that I wanted to reuse “The Darkling Thrush” for a setting of the Christmas text. I treated “Thrush” as raw material, and molded it to my new purpose.

I pitched the idea around a bit to people in the business, but ended up finishing it in my free time. Although the premiere of the piece was in 2016 at The Schubert Club in St. Paul, MN, the real premiere (in my mind) was with 3 of my friends, sitting around my kitchen table, singing it through. And so again, as I find so often, musical moments that stick with you do not take place on stage. This was one of those moments, and I’ll always remember it.

– Timothy C. Takach, 2017