Love Came Down at Christmas

A setting of Christina Rossetti's poem, Love Came Down at Christmas, for soprano, piano, and cello. "Love Came Down at Christmas" was written during November 2020, after a period of about two months when I hadn't composed at all due to being too emotionally exhausted and depressed to work at it. Out of the blue, during the first week of November, a friend of a friend contacted me to ask if I had any art songs suitable for the Advent and Christmas seasons; I didn't. However, as it is a good idea to have such a piece, and with the encouragement of this woman seeking out my music, I was eager to write one. I asked her if she had a text in mind, and she did. She also told me her husband is a cellist. Having the text and instrumentation provided lifted enough of the decision-making off me, and I began to write. It took a couple of weeks to get my composing muscles back in shape, but I finished in time. Coming from a family of musicians myself, I find it extremely special when family members play together, so I wrote this piece as a soprano-cello duet, with piano accompaniment. While I love the sentiment of Christina Rossetti's poem, "Love Came Down," I don't find it to be a particularly singable poem; for one thing, it is quite short. So, in my approach to this piece, I took liberty with the text, particularly the form, in order to express the emotions engrained within the text.