The Sussex Carol (On Christmas Night)

Words: Traditional English Carol
for SATB voices, a cappella
Voces Solis, conducted by Ryan Keeling
My setting of The Sussex Carol began as a setting of Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. It wasn’t until the piece was completed and nearing performance that a colleague — very helpfully, I might add — pointed out that Frost’s poem is not yet in the public domain. In fact, not only is it still under copyright, but other composers have tried to set it to music but were denied the rights to do so. (This is, to the best of my understanding, the story behind Eric Whitacre’s Sleep.) Thus began the process of trying to find a different text to fit the original music, and I was fortunate enough to find The Sussex Carol without too much difficulty. If my memory serves me correctly, I changed the way one chord resolves, but the rest of the music remained exactly the same.

I mention this because most people who perform The Sussex Carol find it somewhat surprising that the music was originally written for a different text. While there is little to no actual “text painting” in the music, the words and music fit together (in my opinion) surprisingly well. Now that The Sussex Carol is what it is, I can’t imagine going back to Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

​Duration:  3 minutes