Terrence Niska
Composer • Arranger
Il est ne
Composer Notes
This song has a long history with me. I first wrote a five-part vocal to be sung by the group Five By Design (of which I was a member) back in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Unfortunately, it never found its way in to our repertoire. It sat on my computer for quite a few years before I revised it to be sung as a trio with my brother, Kurt, and his wife, Lorie. I had written a vocal arrangement of the carol for us to sing at some Christmas concerts and a few years later, when putting this album together, I returned to the first chart and adapted it for piano solo.
The meter of the song moves back and forth between 3/4 and 2/4 and conveys the joy and hopefulness of the opening lyrics:
“He is born, the Divine Child,
Play the oboe, resound the bagpipes.
He is born, the Divine Child,
Let us all sing of his arrival.”
It is this combination of instruments that I tried to emulate in the introduction, with the bagpipes in the left hand and the oboes in the right. When the tune proper begins, there is a definite rhythmic vitality that is maintained throughout the prelude as it celebrates the long-awaited birth of Jesus as foretold by the prophets over 4,000 years ago. From start to finish, the influence of both George Winston and Mannheim Steamroller can be heard in the music.
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