In the summer of 1943, Britten added a further carol to the set (‘That yongë child’), along with a new Interlude for solo harp, and his preference for boys’ voices was now strengthened by several memorable performances of the work in the run-up to Christmas. Britten wrote to Elizabeth Mayer on 8 December: [the carols] have had a series of thrilling shows by a choir of little Welsh boys (from a school in the poorest part of Swansea) and a great Russian harpist, Maria Korchinska. This has meant many journeys to Wales to rehearse, & then they all (35!) came up to town & sang the piece many times, & to record it […] People seem to love the piece, & altho’ it has been only printed about a month, the 1st edition is just on sold out. A Ceremony of Carols sets nine medieval and 16th-century poems between the 'Hodie' of the plainsong Vespers. The sole accompanying instrument is a harp, but given the right acoustic, sensitive attention to the words and fine rhythmic control the piece has a remarkable richness and depth. The Westminster Cathedral Choir performs this work beautifully; diction is immaculate and the acoustic halo surrounding the voices gives a festive glow to the performance. A Ceremony of Carols is for three lines of either boy trebles or female sopranos, plus a harp. Britten originally scored it for women’s voices, but then had second thoughts after the debut performance in December 1942. The revised, and published, version was first sung by the Morriston Boys’ Choir the following Christmas.

Britten composed the music at the same time as the Hymn to St. Cecilia and in similar style. Originally conceived as a series of unrelated songs, it was later unified into one piece with the framing processional and recessional chant in unison based on the Gregorian antiphon "Hodie Christus natus est". A harp solo based on the chant, along with a few other motifs from "Wolcum Yole", also serves to unify the composition. In addition, the movements "This Little Babe" and "Deo Gracias" have the choir reflecting harp-like effects by employing a canon at the first in stretto.

The work begins and ends with a plainchant Procession and Recession that the choir enter and leave the stalls or concert hall to. The eighth movement, meanwhile, is an Interlude for the harp alone. The Ceremony of Carols is one of Britten’s best-known and most-performed works. It is a brilliantly conceived and dramatic concert work which sees the voices process to their places singing unaccompanied plainsong and, at the end, processing out again to the same chant. These movements can also be accompanied but strictly only if the voices do not process. The final Alleluia can be repeated as many times as necessary to get the singers to and from their destination. The composition draft was finished on 8 January 1948, but Britten then put the music aside while he embarked on his realization of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera—first performed in Cambridge on 24 May—and it was not until 31 May that he was able to complete the cantata’s orchestration, less than a week before the first performance. It begins with the Latin “Hodie Christus natus est,” sung in unison and unaccompanied as the processional. That is followed by several poems from the Middle Ages that Britten chose to tell the Christmas story, one of which is “Balulalow,” a lullaby with text from the 16th century. Halfway through the cantata, the harp solo “Interlude” not only unifies the entire work by including themes from various movements but also displays the versatility of the harp. After the harp solo, the choir continues with the dissonant “In freezing winter night,” the lighthearted “Spring Carol,” and the joyful “Deo Gracias.” The recessional is the same Latin text that was sung as a processional, “Hodie Christus natus est.” Britten had asked Eric Crozier to collaborate with him on the cantata. Crozier had recently provided him with a substantial libretto for his comic opera Albert Herring, first performed at Glyndebourne in June 1947, but he found the task of originating a text for the new work more of an uphill struggle. In September 1947 Britten gave him Haydn’s Creation to serve as a useful model of the kind of piece he had in mind, and the Saint Nicolas text was completed in draft form in November (though rewriting was later required). Britten began composing the music before Christmas, writing to Pears on 18 December: I am beginning St Nicolas, & enjoying it hugely. It’ll be difficult to write, because that mixture of subtlety & simplicity is most extending, but very interesting […] I think St Michael’s [choir] will have to be relegated to the galleries (where anyhow all girls should be in Church), because they are obviously the most efficient, & their breathy voices are obviously most suited to the wind noises & so forth.

A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 is an extended choral composition for Christmas by Benjamin Britten scored for three-part treble chorus, solo voices, and harp. The text, structured in eleven movements, is taken from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett. It is principally in Middle English, with some Latin and Early Modern English. It was composed in 1942 on Britten's sea voyage from the United States to England. His formal music education included private lessons in composition, piano, and viola. From 1930 to 1933, he studied at the Royal College of Music in London. While he was a student, his compositions began to get important recognition. One of them was his first Christmas choral work, A Boy was Born, written in 1933 for the BBC Singers. A review published in The Times following the Lancing premiere declared that Saint Nicolas‘testified yet again to the composer’s genius for securing the most telling effects by the simplest of means’. Other critics found the work patchy, and rather too occasional in nature, with one venturing to suggest that ‘at some moments the naivety sounded assumed rather than spontaneous’. But the piece was an instant success with the public, and typified Britten’s unique ability to bring together amateur performers and even the audience (via the means of collective hymn-singing) into a coherent musico-dramatic experience with widespread popular appeal. Many further performances followed: on 6 December 1948 (St Nicolas’s Day), for example, it was conducted by Britten in Amsterdam with local Dutch forces, and was then revived at the second Aldeburgh Festival in 1949. In November that year it was heard in Los Angeles while Britten and Pears were on an extended concert tour of the United States. Stravinsky, then resident in LA and always a grudging commentator on Britten’s creative work, wrote to Nicolas Nabokov on 15 December: ‘All week here I’ve listened to Aunt Britten and Uncle Pears […] Britten himself makes quite a favourable impression, and he is very popular with the public. He undoubtedly has talent as a performer, especially at the piano.’

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The original 1942 publication was written for SSA ( soprano, soprano, alto) children's choir. In 1943, a SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) arrangement was published for a mixed choir. Many of the movements are written as rounds or call-and-response pieces – lyrically simple for the sake of the children performing. There are three-part divisi in both the tenor and bass parts. Each of these lines individually mirrors a line in either the soprano or alto parts, as though the tenor and bass sections are a men's choir singing the original SSA composition with an SSA choir. [1] Movements [ edit ] 1. Procession "Hodie Christus natus est" [ edit ] The challenges here are in creating a real equality between voice parts, fielding a confident pair of soloists, and making the most of the wonderfully colourful poems Britten has chosen to set. Pronunciation is not really an issue, but when I recorded this work with the Finzi Singers I decided to follow the example of Sacred and Profane and use authentic medieval pronunciation for which an expert coach was necessary. It brings an added element of colour to a familiar aural experience.