“Ring Out, Wild Bells”
SATB, harp or piano.
Premiered by the Taylor Festival Choir in December 2014, this is the last of a five-movement cycle entitled So Hallow’d the Time. The full work premiered in 2017, and was released on a Delos recording in 2020.
Text
O Emmanuel,
expectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum:
veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.
—from ‘O Antiphons’, 7th century
[O Emmanuel,
the hope of the nations and their Savior:
come and save us, O Lord and our God.]
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
…The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
—from In Memoriam CVI, Alfred Lord Tennyson