Shepherds, Rejoice!

Composer’ note

With this sturdy folk carol from The Sacred Harp collection we celebrate the joyful aspect of the Christmas season. I have kept the straightforward feeling of the original setting and added a bit of harmonic variation through the use of canonic textures and the Lydian mode. The changing time signatures help to emphasize important words and syllables, while the refrain ‘rejoice’ gives us time to absorb the message of each verse.