I Sing the Birth: A Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior

Here we have one of those valuable pieces that sounds marvelous, yet doesn’t require a lot of rehearsal time for the choir. A classic text by 17th-century poet Ben Jonson is given a homophonic setting for the choir accompanied by arpeggios in piano or harp. What adds so much to the whole is a lovely obbligato part for viola with its underused, rich sound.