Lux Aurumque: An Evensong for the Nativity

For choral enthusiasts, the phrase ‘lux aurumque’, meaning ‘light and gold’, was rendered definitively in the 2000 motet by Eric Whittaker, composed in 2000 and frequently performed in Christmas services and programmes to evoke the radiance of the Nativity scene. I have borrowed the feeling of light and gold to express the glittering radiance of an ocean before dawn for a related literary purpose, a new edition of the Evensong series.

John Milton’s hymn, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, composed in 1629, contains the most beatific vision I know in poetry; a noisy universe hushed and stilled; the earth’s winds and waters amazed into stillness and silence at the birth of the Redeemer. I exeerpted one line, bowdlerised the verb, and made it into an Evensong quilt. Here is Verse V in full:

But peaceful was the night wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist smoothly the waters kissed
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, who now hath quite forgot to rave
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

‘Whist’ is an archaic English adjective meaning ‘ made silent’. For more about the Evensong series, please see A Victorian Evensong in Cambridge, A California Evensong and Ténèbres: A Bengali Evensong.

Whisper New Joys patchworked in linen, cotton and silk, hand quilted, backed with stonewashed cotton and bound with silk; 235 x 240cm.

Happy Christmas everyone.