“A Child is Born”

John Bidwell:

The immense gradual illuminated by Silvestro dei Gherarducci must have extended to several volumes. He and other artists worked on this project for more than a hundred years and never finished it. This cutting may have come from a volume containing the music for a portion of the liturgical year comprising the feasts with a fixed date such as Christmas; other volumes contained the music for the movable feasts such as Easter and Pentecost. The text for the Christmas introit comes from Isaiah 9:16, perhaps best known to English speakers from the “for unto us a child is born” passage in Handel’s Messiah. Here is the introit sung by the Choir of the Ascension.