A Christmas Hymn (Huub de Lange)

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Music files

• CPDL #15297

Editor: Huub de Lange (added 2007-10-31).   Score information: A4, 30 pages, 404 kbytes   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes: The MP3 file is an electronic realisation of the music which is slightly better than the MIDI.

General Information

Title: A Christmas Hymn
Composer: Huub de Lange

Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Sacred, Carol

Language: English
Orchestration: Chamber orchestra.
Published: 2007

Description: Composition on a poem by Richard Wilbur. See also Four Wilbur Songs. Permission has been granted by the poet for his poem to be set to music.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English text

A Christmas Hymn

A stable-lamp is lighted

Whose glow shall wake the sky;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

And straw like gold shall shine;

A barn shall harbor heaven,

A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city

Shall ride in triumph by;

The palm shall strew its branches,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

Though heavy, dull, and dumb,

And lie within the roadway

To pave His kingdom come.

Yet He shall be forsaken,

And yielded up to die;

The sky shall groan and darken,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

For stony hearts of men:

God’s blood upon the spearhead,

God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,

The low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.

Richard Wilbur