Today’s post is actually a back to back comparison of two pieces based on the Huron Carol, aka ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime. Denis Bédard, my former teacher, wrote a wonderful little setting of it for the organ. I always thought that it would sound great as a choral piece, by that I mean, Denis’ setting morphed into a choral piece. So when the English translation of the carol came into public domain, I wrote a choral version of the piece with a Denis sound in mind. Granted it has a few of my favorite tricks, but there are some egregious Bédard sounds that I put into the work. Good composers borrow, great composers steal!
Denis Bédard’s Noël Huron:
My choral setting of ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime