Candelit Carols with the Cathedral Choir
When booking for ‘Candlelit Carols’ on Wednesday 17 or Monday 22 December, you can reserve a copy of ‘O Nata Lux’ on CD at the special discounted price of just £10 (retail price £12.99).
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NEWCASTLE CATHEDRAL
NEWCASTLE CATHEDRAL
A BEACON OF LIGHT
O Nata Lux: Introducing the Cathedral Choir’s New Album
Last updated December 2025
At our Advent Procession on Sunday 30 November, the Cathedral Choir moved from darkness into light, symbolising the journey towards the coming of Christ, the Light of the World. (Scroll down this article for photos.)
This video was created by John Lewis on behalf of Newcastle Cathedral’s Choirs Association to mark the album’s launch.
During Advent, the Choir will be performing at numerous services, guiding us towards a joyous celebration on Christmas Day and continuing through to Epiphany. Tickets are also available for the Choir’s ever-popular ‘Candlelit Carols’ on Wednesday 17 or Monday 22 December, both at 7:30pm.
Advent Sunday also marked the official launch of the Choir’s new album, ‘O Nata Lux’. The limited-edition CD is available in the Cathedral’s retail space for £12.99, with digital downloads also available:
When booking for ‘Candlelit Carols’, you can reserve a copy of ‘O Nata Lux’ on CD at the special discounted price of just £10 (retail price £12.99). If you would like to order a CD by post (UK only), please email music@newcastlecathedral.org.uk
We are pleased to share, below, an introduction to the album written by our Director of Music, Ian Roberts…
From Advent Sunday until the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas), the Season of the Incarnation is celebrated, and the liturgy of the Church takes the worshipper on a profound journey.
At Newcastle Cathedral, this is illuminated through music. Each staging post on the journey – the hushed anticipation of Christ’s coming during the weeks of Advent, the joyous celebration of Christmas, the manifestation of the mystery at the Epiphany, and the conclusion of the season at Candlemas with its bittersweet foretaste of all that is to come – has proved rich inspiration for composers of every age.
For this recording, we concentrate on composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including some recently written works receiving their first recording.
With an early documented example of the service held at King’s College, Cambridge in 1934, the Advent Procession on the First Sunday of Advent has become a staple of the calendar in Church of England cathedrals during modern times.
The atmospheric journey from darkness to light, with the procession moving from West to East, often starts with the Advent Matins Responsory. This recording begins with a setting of the text by American composer Anthony Piccolo. With a colour palette and harmonic language akin to that of Ravel, the sense of expectancy in Piccolo’s setting is vivid and dramatic.
The theme of light is then further explored in Northumbrian-born composer Lucy Walker’s O Nata Lux, with its shimmering texture and luminous harmonies. The Magnificat is sung daily throughout the year at the Cathedral, but during the Advent season, as our thoughts turn to the Virgin Mary, this takes on particular resonance. The Windsor Service is scored for a soloist and a 3-part choir of trebles. It takes plainsong as its inspiration, but the distinctive harmonic language of composer Kerensa Briggs shines through. Likewise, her miniature A Tender Shoot, setting an English translation of the famous 15th-century German hymn based on Isaiah 11, is imbued with a rich texture and interesting harmonic corners.
Credit: Photos in this article are by volunteer Tim Watkinson.
As we move towards Christmas, we are steered away from sentimentality and rooted in the present by Peace on Earth, with words and music by Master of the King’s Music Errollyn Wallen. In this, the first of a couple of pieces performed by trebles and harp, the voices sing of a yearning for light and peace over a spinning ostinato representing our troubled world.
But it is then the light of Christmas that triumphs in Peter Wishart’s choral fanfare Alleluia! A New Work. This is followed by a couple of particularly beautiful lullabies from 20th-century organist composers Edward Bairstow and George Thalben-Ball, the latter being an arrangement of a Polish carol, and further Christmas offerings, providing fresh interpretations of traditional carols, from Australian organist June Nixon and our own Organist Emeritus Timothy Hone.
The Cathedral’s service of Nine Lessons and Carols can provide an opportunity to celebrate recent music from local composers. Assistant Director of Music Kris Thomsett’s Balulalow was composed specially for Christmas 2024 and for this recording. John Casken, whose music has enjoyed national acclaim for some four decades, takes much inspiration from his home in Northumberland. His haunting Christmas Introit Love Came Down at Christmas, originally written for soloists at St Mary and St Michael, Doddingon, Wooler in 2020, is performed here by our choristers.
The Epiphany section begins with Anglo-Canadian composer Healey Willan’s setting of poetry by Laurence Housman, and the second of Assistant Director of Music Kris Thomsett’s pieces, in this case setting the familiar words of the Coventry Carol. The choristers then sing again with harp accompaniment in A New Year Carol from Friday Afternoons, a collection of 12 children’s songs by Benjamin Britten.
A more recent tradition, which, like the Advent Procession, further builds upon the opportunity to use our Cathedral buildings creatively and symbolically, and to combine this with music, is the Epiphany Procession. This liturgy takes the revelation of the ‘three miracles’, celebrated in the gospel readings on Sundays throughout the season, as a starting point. The King of all the World is revealed to the Magi, the New Creation is revealed in the water made wine, and Christ is revealed in the waters of baptism.
Although written at different times as individual works, Richard Allain’s three Epiphany-themed pieces, with words by the composer’s brother Thomas Allain, have proved a dramatic and fitting addition to this service. The earliest of these works, Cana’s Guest, dates from 2005 and features a dramatic choral build-up, climaxing at ‘as hearts respond with love’, and dying back down to a quiet organ conclusion. The Magi’s Gifts is the most intimate of the three settings and was written for the choir of Merton College, Oxford, in 2013. The Beloved (2015), also written for Merton College and based on the plainsong antiphon Asperges Me, is the most dramatic of the three, and is a vivid portrayal of the Baptism of Christ, complete with organ toccata and the whispering of the leaves on the banks of the River Jordan as the Spirit descends as a dove.
The traditional Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is an example of a carol whose original text stretches far beyond the celebration of Christmas, with verses about Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, betrayal, death, resurrection, and ascension. As such, the carol contextualises the Christmas story. Modern musical settings often restrict themselves to the Christmas verses. In the case of John Gardner’s lively setting, the text finishes with Christ’s baptism, but this carol still acts as a bridge towards the culmination of the season, which is the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas).
The final work of the album is Gustav Holst’s setting of Simeon’s Song, written for Westminster Cathedral Choir in 1915 but remaining unpublished until it was revised by Imogen Holst for a performance in 1974 and subsequently published in 1979. The quiet intensity of the first section matches the weight of Simeon’s words, whereas the final, glorious choral chords remind us of all that we celebrate across the season: that Christ came to dwell among us as the light of the world, a light no darkness can quench.
