for upper voices (SSAA) a cappella
Text: English (Joseph Mohr, trans John Freeman Young)
Duration: 3½ minutes
Difficulty: 2/5
Use: Christmas

Composer's note
Silent night is the piece which started a new tradition at Pembroke! At the end of each term we hold a little party for the families of our girl choristers after our final rehearsal. We have always learnt a fun new piece in the final rehearsal and then performed it to the families an hour or so later. A couple of years ago we were discussing what to learn in the final rehearsal and the girls suggested it might be fun to write our own arrangement of a carol. We quickly agreed that Silent night was our top choice, and settled on the key of D flat almost instantly, as it’s such a lovely key to sing in. We had a great deal of fun seeing how we could write an arrangement that was manageable for our youngest singers whilst stretching our older ones with some slightly jazzy harmonies. We wrote the whole arrangement in one 75-minute rehearsal, and performed it to the parents straight after. We’ve written a new piece at the end of every term since!

Composer's note
Following a couple of experiments with whole group composition, we decided to do a full weekend of Girls’ Choir composition a few years ago. Gaudete is one of the arrangements which came out of it. I went to the girls with a list of suggestions and they jumped at the idea of writing Gaudete – I think this might have something to do with the fact that many rehearsals around Christmas time feature a ceremonial rewatching of the ‘Gaudete Shreds’ video on YouTube – if you haven’t yet seen this video, I thoroughly recommend seeking it out! We experimented with a couple of different approaches but all agreed we wanted something that had rhythmic impetus and drive, which is how we came up with the introduction. One of the girls then tried singing the melody over the top while we were throwing ideas around, and so the backbone of the arrangement was born. As usual, a couple of its features came about by accident. I often sit at the piano messing around with different possibilities while we are writing arrangements, weaving in suggestions from the girls with some of my own serious (and less-serious!) suggestions. I jokingly played a key change into the final chorus and the girls all loved it so much that we decided we had to keep it in. Similarly, when we were preparing to record this for our Christmas Album we all felt the final chorus was missing something. We happened to have a tambourine lying around for another piece we were doing, and one of our altos improvised a tambourine part. Everyone’s faces lit up, and we’ve performed it with tambourine ever since.

Anna Lapwood

Anna Lapwood
Award-winning organist, Anna Lapwood, has drawn a vast new audience to the instrument from all around the world. Her huge social media following has translated into audiences of thousands for recitals, including at her ‘home’ venue – London’s Royal Albert Hall. Much of her year is spent as Music Director of Pembroke College, Cambridge (UK), alongside performing recitals and concertos with orchestras around the world. Anna is now a much-loved broadcaster on radio, TV and online. She was awarded an Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music (London) and the prestigious Gamechanger Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2023, and is an advocate for proactive, fair representation for all in music.