The poem Adam lay ybounden can be traced back to an early fifteenth-century manuscript held in the British Library. Though it is now a staple of Advent and Christmas seasons, the text appears not to have attracted much attention before the early twentieth century. Composers who set it include Benjamin Britten, John Ireland and Giles Swayne, whose version of Adam lay ybounden was written for the 2009 Advent carol service at St John’s. The most celebrated of the free-standing settings was composed by Boris Ord in 1957, shortly before the directorship of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, passed from Ord to David Willcocks. Peter Warlock’s Adam lay ybounden was first published exactly a century ago, in 1923, as part of a group of five unison songs with piano accompaniment—a format possibly selected as a way of reconciling complex harmony with singability. It is not clear whether Adam lay ybounden, like Warlock’s more famous carol Balulalow, was originally intended for unison or solo singing. The form of Warlock’s setting might be described, once again, as modified strophic. However, each stanza is so short—the entire piece lasts little more than a minute—that the impression is one of gradual melodic mutation and of accrued harmonic riches. Warlock’s setting appears to have influenced Boris Ord’s 1957 version—so much so that Ord’s carol could almost be considered a reworking. The second phrases of the two settings are virtually identical, and both versions draw heavily on modal harmonies—unsurprising in the case of Warlock, who was very interested in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music. In this setting, however, the line between early music and jazz is surprisingly porous.

from notes by Martin Ennis © 2023