Award-winning composer Thomas Hewitt Jones wrote the music and words of 'Love is the Answer' during lockdown in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, at a time when choirs were forbidden to meet to sing together. The result is an enchanting outpouring of love for family, friends and carol services as well as for the Holy birth, expressing in soaring melodies and heartfelt lyrics.
The carol has been released on video, sung by the Vivum Music Singers at the offices of music publisher Stainer & Bell.
Enjoy the video here
The sheet music of Love Is The Answer is available from Stainer & Bell
COMPOSER NOTE
"Like my carol Follow Yonder Star and Can You Hear Me?, an anthem for kindness, Love is the Answer was composed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is very much intended as an antidote to the gloom, confusion and negativity of that period. On the other hand, one beneficial outcome of lockdown and its privations was to remind us of the importance of friendship and family as the bedrock of our lives, and of choral singing as the essence of our musical community. The experience of Christmas in particular encapsulates the positive spirit of all three, and my own most vivid childhood memories are of the annual school nativity service, and of my invariably being enchanted by those carols that effortlessly married music and words. Subsequently, over the years and in each new choral piece, that harmonious relationship has remained my ideal. In Love is the Answer I especially endeavoured to recreate such a perfect union, setting my own specially written words seamlessly to a soaring melody with descant. In four verses with refrain, the poem retells the nativity story, with its shepherds and wise men, and with a concluding contemporary twist that will, I hope, inspire and uplift singers and audiences alike."
