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Track Name: The Oxen
Composer: Jonathan Rathbone
Text: Thomas Hardy
Duration: 2:52
Nationality: British
Jonathan Rathbone was a chorister at Coventry Cathedral and later, a choral scholar at Christ’s College Cambridge, where he read mathematics. He gained a second degree at the Royal Academy of Music where he studied composition with John Gardner.
“I grew up with this poem as a chorister in Coventry Cathedral, when it was often read in the main evening service on Christmas Eve. So for me the poem not only evokes the scene Hardy paints, but my own childhood Christmas. With both in mind I set about capturing that whimsical and romantic look back at our past Christmases. It starts with with the oxen gently lowing as they sit at the fire. It builds towards the sense of warmth at the end where we give in to the notions and simple beliefs of our childhoods. The last phrase, "...hoping it might be so", I have always interpreted two ways - with the emphasis on 'might' and with the emphasis on 'so'. In this composition, I have tried to keep the question open, as I believe Hardy's poem does. And I have tried to leave it with that sense that it is finished but at the same time, slightly unanswered.”
- Jonathan Rathbone