Music for December 28

Our choral anthem this Sunday is “Verbum caro factum est,” a Renaissance motet presented in a classic edition by American composer Richard Proulx. We will also hear Percy Grainger’s “The Sussex Mummers’ Christmas Carol,” arranged in 1915 from a traditional melody collected by Lucy Broadwood, an English folksong collector and researcher. This piano setting preserves a carol once sung by mummers—costumed villagers who performed seasonal folk plays door-to-door. Grainger was an Australian-born composer, arranger, and pianist who moved to the United States in 1914 and became an American citizen in 1918.