Hurd — Beneath a dark, familiar sky [SATB + organ]

SATB + organ | Duration: approximately 4:30

Commissioned for the 113th Annual Christmas Carol Service at the Memorial Church at Harvard University, this powerful setting of Michael Hudson's evocative text follows the shepherds from the night fields to Bethlehem. Dr. Hurd's music is both dramatic and contemplative, moving from the vast darkness of the opening through the sudden angelic announcement to the quiet mystery of the Incarnation. Sophisticated text painting brings the poetry to life, while the organ part provides rich harmonic support and atmospheric color throughout. A distinctive addition to the Christmas repertoire that rewards careful preparation.

Beneath a dark, familiar sky
The silent air was stirred;
A sudden rush like many wings
Announced a startling word:
A word more distant than the stars
Above the stony ground
And closer than the beating hearts
That marked the sudden sound.
The shepherds rose to face the sky,
Then turned down and fell face down;
This night it seemed that Life itself
Was pressing toward the ground
To take, to hold, to celebrate
The substance of all the earth
And gather all creation in
A reconciling birth.
The stars aligned to point a path,
The shepherds rose and ran,
Swept up in an epiphany
They longed to understand.
This longing also gathers us
To rise and go with them,
And find our way among the ways
That meet in Bethlehem.

—Michael Hudson (1950–2024)

Dr. DAVID HURD (b. 1950) is a native New Yorker and has studied at the Juilliard School, the High School of Music and Art, and the Manhattan School of Music. His undergraduate music degree is from Oberlin College, and he continued his studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Subsequently he has received honorary degrees from four other academic institutions. From 1976 until 2015, he was on the faculty of The General Theological Seminary, having been named Professor of Church Music and Organist there in 1984. He has taught also at Duke University, Manhattan School of Music, Westminster Choir College, and Yale University. A lifelong Episcopalian, he served on the Standing Commission on Church Music from 1977 to 1986 and was a major contributor to The Hymnal 1982. Since winning first prizes both in organ performance and in improvisation at the 1977 International Congress of Organists, he has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe, and has been a featured artist at several national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. His catalogue of published musical compositions features choral, vocal, liturgical, and organ works, and includes a collection of seventy-seven original hymn settings. In 2010 he became the sixteenth recipient of The American Guild of Organists’ Distinguished Composer Award. He was appointed Organist and Music Director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in 2016 having previously served in New York at Trinity Church Wall Street (and Saint Paul’s Chapel), The Church of the Intercession, Saint James Church, All Saints Church, and Church of the Holy Apostles.