O come, o come, Emmanuel

The ancient and familiar carol O come, O come Emmanuel expresses the longing of the people of God to be freed from darkness by the coming of the promised Messiah. In Becky McGlade’s setting, that yearning is expressed by the use of a descending motif for the words ‘O come’, almost like a sigh, at the start of each verse and through the soft dissonances which colour the text. In the final verse the music breaks into five parts with the first soprano almost like a descant. Here the music intensifies chromatically and hovers around minor harmonies, conveying the sense of despair in the words ‘lingering gloom’ and ‘shadows of the tomb’ before the final exuberant ‘Rejoice! Rejoice!’. The piece should be sung expressively and although the tempo is only Andante, there should always be a feeling of forward movement.