Make Ready O Bethlehem

Make Ready O Bethlehem

Artist: Anaphora
Item number: AB040
Category: Byzantine
Chant Type: Byzantine
Language: English
Label: Anaphora
Period: Contemporary
Length: 50'25
Release date: 2003
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Price: $15.95 USD
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You may need RealPlayer or Windows Media Player to listen to the music samples below.

1. Let Us Go Before O Nations (Tone 1)

2. Behold the Time of Our Salvation Approacheth (Tone 8)

3. Make Ready, O Bethlehem (Tone 4)

4. Christ is Born (Tone 1)

5. More Honorable (Tone 1)

6. Magnify, O My Soul (Tone 1)

7. The Virgin Cometh Today (Tone 3)

8. The Gospel of the Third Hour

9. Thy Nativity, O Christ our God (Tone 4)

10. From My Youth Up (Tone 4)

11. From the Womb (Tone 4)

12. Today All Creatures (Tone 2)

13. 9th Odes of Both Nativity Canons (Tone 1)

14. Our Saviour Hath Visited Us (Tone 3)

15. Let Everything That Hath Breath (Tone 4)

16. Come, Let Us Praise the Mother (Tone 4)

17. When It Was Time (Tone 6)

18. As Many As Have Been Baptized (Tone 1)

19. The Shepherds Hastened (Tone 8)

20. Today All the Angels (Tone 6)


This recording is by Anaphora, a group of young chanters from St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Omaha, NE. The group consists of one priest, three male chanters, and two female chanters. This debut CD includes a selection of 20 Nativity hymns set to traditional Byzantine chant settings. It is the first recording of Nativity hymns that is chanted entirely in English and set to traditional Byzantine settings. Includes descriptive liner notes in English. No hymn text.

By: Benjamin Williams

This project offers the listener a variety of positive elements: the hymn selection is good in that includes some of the less well-known hymns and so offers a breadth unusual for many English projects, and the voices are clear and distinct and so the text is easy to hear and understand. Thus this CD is an excellent resource for newcomers to Byzantine music who are looking for a recording to help introduce them to the chant form, and to those interested in the Nativity material that is so infrequently recorded in a comprehensive way. Some of the tracks are especially notable, in particular track 17 ýWhen it was timeý. The cover art is very good (though a more detailed insert would have been nice), and carried through to having it silk screened on the CD itself. It is evident that the performers are committed to the musical genre and pioneering new ground here, and presumably future projects will capture the nuance and verve found on recordings by more experienced Byzantine chanters. All in all though, the CD is worthwhile and offers a unique recording that most will want in their collection.