Gabriel Jackson: The Christmas Story

Here is a version of the Christmas story both familiar and strange. Gabriel Jackson’s cantata largely presents the foretelling, birth and early life of Christ through familiar passages from the Gospels and the Old Testament, and is scored—as one might expect—for choirs, organ and bells, among other forces. Very little of its music, however, will strike the ear as conventional but rather as something both timelessly ancient and contemporary. All the music is original to Jackson, even as he recalls a recent British tradition, exemplified in works by Vaughan Williams and Britten, of writing strange yet hauntingly beautiful music for church performance. Jackson’s style can be a touch more austere than either, but that heightens all the more the moments of magic, such as the sudden key change towards the end of “Expecting”, his simple yet highly evocative setting of a new poem by Penny Boxall which meditates on the Virgin Mary’s experience of pregnancy. There’s a greater focus than usual on the female characters who play a significant role in the early life of Jesus: not just the Virgin Mary, but also the widow Anna, who like Simeon recognises the boy Christ’s divinity when he is taken to the Temple. This focus is partly due to the cantata being commissioned for the Girl Choristers of Merton College, Oxford, who sing both Anna’s song and “Expecting” with rapt and focused tone. They are also joined by the main choir, culminating in the final and entrancingly beautiful setting of “O nata lux”. This begins with the susurration of the Girl Choristers’ voices before a plainchant-like melody—Jackson’s own invention—is taken up by the main choir, and bells and organ join for a most uplifting, jubilant end.