The text comes from the pen of the seventeenth-century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan a leading metaphysical voice during the Commonwealth period (1649-1660) when the republican government of Oliver Cromwell banned the Anglican Church. Christ's Nativity was commissioned by the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington D.C. with support from the Richard Wayne Dirksen Memorial Endowment Fund. The selected lyrics by Welsh poet Henry Vaughan fascinated me immensely and therfore prompted me to think about a specific musical environment for the piece best suited for merging the music into this wonderful poetic landscape. This poetry brings about a strong mixture of the Evangelicalmystery of Christ's Nativity mystically evoked by Nature and at the same time reveals the optimism and drama of an ordinary individual that any human being can easily identify with.
