Gifts for the Holy Child – Saint petit enfant

D No: 137

Text - Incipit: Holy little child

Cross Reference: Holy little child; Saint Petit Enfant

Text - Author or Scripture: Anna Fitch Ardenghi (1887 –1980)

Performing Forces: unison hb

Date Published: MS

Date of Composition: 1975

Notes: Poem by Mrs. Anna Fitch Ardenghi in French, “Saint petit Enfant,” also tr. Eng. She gave the Great Organ in 1938, and contributed generously to the renovation in 1972. We corresponded over several years and she signed herself as “Old Driftwood.” “Holy little child” was in a slender volume of lovely poems she had written and published. I set it, had one of our solo boys sing it, taped it and sent it to her for a Christmas present. The following Christmas she was still alive (though rapidly failing in her late eighties), and heard the choir boys sing it on the NBC-TV broadcast.

Score:

137 Gifts for the Holy Child

The NBC telecast recording.

It varies interestingly from the score above.