Angels Carol John Rutter

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Kizzy Burnworth

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Aug 3, 2024, 11:55:54 AM8/3/24

to severhefan

"It was really a short step from singing and enjoying carols, to saying 'Why don't I write some of my own?'" Rutter explains. "Every now and again I write a new carol and it's like a thread that runs through my musical life. It always brings me back to those happy days as a little boy soprano, getting so excited about Christmas."

On his new recording, A Christmas Festival, Rutter and his longtime choir, the Cambridge Singers, mix carols from Wales, Spain and even the Caribbean with five recent carols of Rutter's own, including a new version of "Ave Maria."

"It's often sung to the words 'Good Christian Men Rejoice,' and it's a carol dating right back to the 15th century. The legend goes it was sung by the angels on Christmas Eve and written down by a monk. If ever there was a carol that might have been sung by the angels, that would be it."

"What I would like to think is that there is a new John Rutter out there writing lots of lovely new carols, and that mine will have served their day and their time, and they'll quietly be there in the Library of Congress maybe, if you search. But I won't mind a bit if they are forgotten."