** This setting develops a unison version composed to be a chorale in a Nativity tableau created at Lee Abbey from Luigi Santucci’s imaginative biography Wrestling with Christ (1969). This music is also set as a four-part hymn-anthem with organ and solo instrument.

Lord-of-all-hopefulness

Jan Struther’s lovely text, and the need for it to be set afresh came after reading part of Santucci’s evocation of Joseph:

“…a carpenter … Wood is sensitive and chaste and Joseph exercised his innocent sensuality by passing his open palms along planks smoothed by his carpenter’s plane, by caressing the edges bevelled by his lathe, and breathing in his nostrils the fragrance of sawdust – that odour of hard work which, whenever anyone comes to the door, makes a man raise his sweaty brow knowing his visitor is a friend …”