The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) wrote ‘Christmas Bells’ in 1863, at a time of personal anguish following the tragic death of his wife, and at the height of the American Civil War, which affected him deeply. In this setting for SATB, organ and bass drum, composed in 2018 when all those who lost their lives in the First World War were especially remembered, the reference to the cannon in verse 4 serves appositely for the suffering of all wars, but with the poem’s positive ...