Here's a Christmas staple for the Villa-Lobos lover: the beautiful Praesepe, a choral work written in 1952 for alto soloist and mixed chorus, #21 in the collection Musica Sacra, vol. 1.
Villa-Lobos set the words of Padre Jose de Anchieta, a Portuguese missionary to Brazil, written in 1563.
Sed iuvat interia tanti primordia partus,
nascentisque urbem volvere mente Dei.
But it is profitable to turn over in our minds the hidden origins
of this great birth, the town in which God was born.
