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Free Classical Christmas Carol Music 19 November 2007 The Anthony Hawkins Column CMUK’s Christmas Carols: The Christmas carol is an essential component of our seasonal paraphernalia, a few cherubic strains being sufficient to pacify even the hardened naysayer.
It has its roots in a pagan tradition that stretches back to the Latin chorula or Greek choros, a circling dance enacted in religious rituals and fertility rites. The early church, dictating matters of both state and religion, became decidedly uneasy about these pagan practices and subsequently outlawed the singing of carols, effective well into the Middle Ages. The Christianization of the carol came with the reforms introduced by Francis of Assisi in 13th-century Italy, where it became synonymous with the feast of the Nativity; navigating its way to the British Isles by way of Franciscan friars, the carol flourished as a joyous alternative to the dour piety of Gregorian chant. With the Reformation, the carol’s march was rudely halted as it became entrenched in the gauntlet of theological flip-flopping. Most Puritans adopted the early church's view that carolling was a pagan practice and, in England, it was outlawed by the staunch Protestant Oliver Cromwell. With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, this prohibition was officially rescinded; however, it took some time to erode the established churches’ opposition. The carol’s popularity was then resurrected by the Victorians, who revived many medieval carols and composed a good many new ones; notable collections came in the form of A Good Christmas Box in 1847 and Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern in 1871. Bolstered by today’s media-driven commodity culture, “Hark! Commercialism’s Angels Sing!!” the carol has now donned contemporary garb and shed many of its religious connotations, with the secular airwaves winning out over the oligarchic medieval clergy! CMUK has chosen some of the most iconic carols that are guaranteed to get you into the Christmas spirit! Listen to any of these online, searching by title in ‘Seeqpod’: - http://www.seeqpod.com/
This is one of the most popular of all Christmas carols thanks to its child-like simplicity and charm. Its pastoral melody, Cradle Song, was written in 1895 by the American Gospel songwriter, W. J. Kirkpatrick, a carpenter from Philadelphia. Its lyrics are not of an especially scriptural nature; for example, the Gospels do not indicate that Jesus did not cry as a baby, nor do they suggest that cattle were present at his birth! The publication of this carol in a Lutheran Sunday school book has created the misconception that the lyrics were written by the German theologian and religious reformer, Martin Luther, himself. Click here for the lyrics: Away In A Manger
“In the Bleak Midwinter” is set to a text written by English poet Christina Rossetti, with Gustav Holst composing the tune, ‘Cranham’, for the poem’s appearance in The English Hymnal in 1906. It is thought that the composer penned this hymn, now one of his most popular works, whilst staying in the village of Cranham, where there is now a cottage named ‘Midwinter Cottage’.
Click here for the lyrics: In The Bleak Midwinter
This is one of the earliest carols in the English language, its text written in 1534 by Robert Croo. It used to be sung towards the end of the Pageant of the Shearman and the Tailors, part of the cycle of ‘mystery plays’ performed in the streets of Coventry during the Middle Ages on the feast of Corpus Christi. In the play, the mothers of Bethlehem intone this hymn to lull their children to sleep, adding great poignancy to the scene in which Herod’s men charge in, slaying the innocents: "Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under" (Matthew 2:16). Click here for the Lyrics: The Coventry Carol
The text to this processional carol was written in the early eighteenth century by John Wade, a devout Roman Catholic and fervent Jacobite. Some have speculated that, in its original Latin version, Adeste Fideles, the words represented a coded rallying cry to supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. Click here for the lyrics: O Come, All Ye Faithful
In Britain, it is now commonly sung to ‘Forest Green’, an arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams, written for the Oxford Book of Carols, of the traditional English folk ballad “The Ploughman's Dream”. The composer made use a melody that he had copied down whilst listening to a farm labourer singing in Forrest Green, Surrey. Click here for the lyrics: O Little Town of Bethlehem
This surely merits the accolade of being one of the most famous Christmas carols, having been translated into over 300 languages and dialects. Visit ‘Silent Night Web’ on http://www.silentnight.web.za/ and peruse its dizzying profusion of translations, with 193 versions in 130 different languages! The traditional story that “Silent Night” was hurriedly penned on Christmas Eve, after a mouse had chewed through the church organ’s wiring, is, though charming, sadly only folklore! Rather, it is the work of Rev. Joseph Mohr and Franz Xaver Gruber, the priest and organist of St Nicholas' Church in the tiny alpine village of Oberndorf, Austria. Originally written for two male voices and guitar, it was first sung there after Midnight Mass, on December 31st, 1818. Click here for the lyrics: Silent Night, Holy Night
This hymn, a hundred years in the making, is the result of various tweakings of the original text written in 1739 by Charles Wesley, “Hark, How All the Welkin Rings”. Over a century later, in 1840, Felix Mendelssohn composed the cantata Festgesang – ‘For the Gutenberg Festival’, a paean to Johannes Gutenberg, the man credited with the invention of movable type printing. It was the English musician, William H. Cummings, who effected a marriage of Wesley’s text and a Mendelssohn tune from the cantata, despite the composer's explicit statement that this particular melody "will never do for sacred words". Click here for the lyrics: Hark, The Herald Angels Sing CMUK recommends: http://www.the-sixteen.org.uk/recordings/coro_43.php CMUK recommends: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/ - Visit this site for the most comprehensive list of Christmas carols published online, with lyrics and notes provided for each carol. To hear multifarious offerings of Christmas carols online, visit these sites below: http://www.the-north-pole.com/carols/index.htm http://www.defordmusic.com/christmas.htm Explore other types of Classical Christmas Music
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It was the experience of the Holy Land itself that gave Phillips Brooks, an Episcopalian priest who was elected Bishop of Massachusetts in 1891, the inspiration for the hymn’s lyrics. Brooks, initially rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, programmed the hymn into the Christmas service of the Church’s Sunday school, where it was sung by the children’s choir to the music written by his church organist, Lewis H. Redner. 
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© Court Lane Music 2007