At some point in the coming days, buffeted by the frenzy and bombast of a 21st-century Christmas, you may have the urge (and perhaps just a sliver of time) to re-enter the meaning and spirit of the season through a different, purer door.
But how to achieve this? Well, think of setting 10 or so minutes aside for Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). In his sleeve notes for a superb 2008 recording by the Choir of Westminster Abbey, Robert Quinney describes the motets as “exquisite miniatures” in which the French composer, alighting on four scenes from the Nativity story, “took time-honoured liturgical texts from the Catholic tradition and dressed them in bold new clothes”.
