Baylor Handbells to Perform the Music of Christmas Dec. 3

by Richard Veit

The Baylor University Handbell Choir will present its annual fall semester concert at 6 p.m. Tuesday, December 3, in Meadows Recital Hall.
The concert, under the direction of Debra L. Jackson, lecturer in handbells, will feature several selections of Christmas music, as well as arrangements of sacred pieces by such composers as Gabriel Fauré and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Opening the program will be Kevin McChesney's "A Festive Chime," which will be followed by Douglas Smith's arrangement of Fauré's "En Prière" ("In Prayer").
The Italian composer Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi wrote several collections of balletti and canzonette during the last two decades of the 16th century, and one of these pieces was adapted by Johann Lindemann as the hymn tune "In dir ist Freude" ("In Thee Is Gladness") in 1597. The Baylor Handbell Choir will perform it in its Anderson-Kosche arrangement, with Debra L. Jackson at the piano and featuring solo ringer Jenny Gorham.
The first portion of the concert will conclude with a "Minuet and Trio" by Mozart (as arranged by Michael Wright) and then Cathy Moklebust's "Let All Things Now Living" (her setting of the hymn tune "The Ash Grove").
Following intermission, the program will turn to the music of Christmas, with Mary C. Engel's arrangement of the Sicilian folk melody "O Sanctissima," Scarlett H. Varela's setting of the traditional English carol "I Saw Three Ships," and Margaret R. Tucker's medley for bells known as "A Christmas Carillon."
The concert will close with two familiar selections-Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," as arranged by Robert Ivey, and themes from Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" in an arrangement by Kevin McChesney.
The Baylor Handbell Choir concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at 755-3991.