Music for Christmas 'Make We Joy'

Choral music is at the heart of both Holst’s and Walton’s compositional output. In keeping with contemporary ideas, such as the rediscovery of folk-song, medieval texts and the idea of an English musical renaissance, both moved away from the sentimental Victorian conception of the carol to a purer form. Thus in Holst’s In the bleak mid-winter the composer creates a simple moving and memorable setting to Christina Rossetti’s poem. Walton settings of traditional texts in All this time and King Herod and the Cock are perhaps more typical of this genre.