"He was inspired...the town was at peace.". First published in 1961 and edited by David Willcocks and Reginald Jacques, this bestselling series has since expanded to a five-volume set. Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. Two well-known later examples are "O Tannenbaum" (O Christmas tree), from a German folksong arranged by Ernst Anschütz and ""Stille Nacht" ("Silent Night") by the Austrians Franz Xaver Gruber and Joseph Mohr. The book is as popular today as it was over 175 years ago. "Silent Night", "O Tannenbaum" or "Jingle Bells", are also sung in Greek translation. There, it was picked up and spread by two families of traveling folk singers, who performed around northern Europe. There is no doubt whatever about that. In the 1680s and 1690s, two French composers incorporated carols into their works. It was Christmas Eve, 1818, when the now-famous carol was first performed as Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht. Martin Luther wrote the carol "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her", which can be acted as a play of the Christmas history. Decked in down against the cold, people streamed into the Kimmel Center's cavernous lobby from the front and side doors. [4] The songs now known specifically as carols were originally communal songs sung during celebrations like harvest tide as well as Christmas. The Nadala or Cançó de Nadal (in plural nadales) are a popular group of songs, usually requiring a chorus, that are song from Advent until Epiphany. The most popular Italian Christmas carol is "Tu scendi dalle stelle", written in 1732 by Saint Alphonsus Liguori.[40]. Traditionally, carols have often been based on medieval chord patterns, and it is this that gives them their uniquely characteristic musical sound. Classical Video from WRTI's Performance Studio, When 1,200 Music Lovers in Philadelphia Came Together To Sing a Beloved Carol, This Is What Happened, Watch and Listen: The Wissahickon H.S. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French origin. Over the years, the carol's mystique grew with its popularity. As quite a few have references to mythological events and powers, some authors claim that they contain part of the religion that was present in the territory before Christianity arrived as it was kept alive in these mountainous regions. [14] "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is one of the most beloved works of 19th-century literature, and the story's enormous popularity helped make Christmas a major holiday in Victorian Britain.When Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" in late 1843, he had ambitious purposes in mind, yet he could never have imagined the profound impact his story would have. Compositions continue to be written that become popular carols. This combination first appeared in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" in 1861. The English version of "Silent Night" is typically sung in three verses corresponding with the original 1, 6, and 2. A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens Stave 1: Marley's Ghost arley was dead: to begin with. The "Huron Carol" (or "Twas in the Moon of Wintertime") is a Canadian Christmas hymn (Canada's oldest Christmas song), written probably in 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary at Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in Canada. Directed by Clive Donner. [11] As recently as 1865, Christmas-related lyrics were adopted for the traditional English folk song Greensleeves, becoming the internationally popular Christmas carol "What Child is This?". Important composers of villancicos were Juan del Encina, Pedro de Escobar, Francisco Guerrero, Gaspar Fernandes and Juan Gutiérez de Padilla. [6], The publication of Christmas music books in the 19th century helped to widen the popular appeal of carols. Mohr had composed the words much earlier, in 1816, but on Christmas Eve brought them to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for the church service. Carollers (Tagalog: Namamaskô) begin wassailing in November, with mostly children and young adults participating in the custom. Pastoral Weihnachtslieder are sometimes called Hirtenlieder ("shepherd songs"). Generally speaking, the musical style of each carol closely follows the secular music tradition of each region. "Weihnachtslieder" redirects here. 'Round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild.  Sleep in heavenly peace,  Sleep in heavenly peace. [42] They were originally sung to celebrate the birth of the Sun (winter solstice). Minuit Chrétien French Christmas Carol For O Holy Night. Lyrics to 'Good King Wenceslas' by Christmas Carols: Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. Radiant beams from thy holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace.  Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth, Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth. : "tiny snowflake, white, tiny skirt") are popular German songs introduced in Kindergarten and primary school. Latin hymns such as Veni redemptor gentium, written by Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, were austere statements of the theological doctrine of the Incarnation in opposition to Arianism. A Christmas Carol was published in 1843. "C.M.B" is written in chalk on houses they have visited. Exam practice question A Christmas Carol Exam questions Revision activity: Read the exam question and highlight the KEY focus (eg: the first one is ‘family’) Read the extract, highlight anything that you think is relevant to the KEY focus. Mickey's Christmas Carol is a 1983 theatrical featurette featuring established Disney characters re-enacting the classic Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol. Some are wassailing songs, some are religious songs in English, some are in Latin, and some are "macaronic" — a mixture of English and Latin. 'Round yon Virgin Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild. 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The first appearance in print[citation needed] of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen", "The First Noel", "I Saw Three Ships" and "Hark! In Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, where it is the middle of summer at Christmas, there is a tradition of Carols by Candlelight concerts held outdoors at night in cities and towns across the country, during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Several different Christmas episodes, apart from the birth of Jesus itself, are described in Christmas carols, such as: In addition, some carols describe Christmas-related events of a religious nature, but not directly related to the birth of Jesus. Dating from the 18th century, "Les Anges dans nos Campagnes" (known as "Angels We Have Heard On High" in English) is another famous French carol. [18] The songs that were chosen for singing in church omitted the wassailing carols, and the words "hymn" and "carol" were used almost interchangeably. Other examples include: In Austria, Belgium and Germany, Christmas is celebrated by some with children dressing as "The Three Kings", carrying a star on a pole. The carol was first performed in the Nikolaus-Kirche (Church of St. Nicholas) in Oberndorf, Austria on 24 December 1818. In older times, caroling children asked for and were given edible gifts such as dried fruit, eggs, nuts or sweets; during the 20th century this was gradually replaced with money gifts – ranging from small change in the case of strangers to considerable amounts in the case of close relatives. WRTI's Susan Lewis has the story. He also wrote "Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" and "Christum wir sollen loben schon". With George C. Scott, Frank Finlay, Angela Pleasence, Edward Woodward. The publication in 1871 of Christmas Carols, New and Old by Henry Ramsden Bramley and Sir John Stainer was a significant contribution to a revival of carols in Victorian Britain. Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann wrote a scientific book on German Christmas carols which is also a song book. I should like to have given him something: that’s all.” About the Fezziwig family: “…shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.” In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Christmas "Sequence" or "Prose" was introduced in Northern European monasteries, developing under Bernard of Clairvaux into a sequence of rhymed stanzas. Ukrainian Christmas carols are named kolyadka (Ukrainian: колядки). [12], A modern form of the practice of caroling can be seen in "Dial-A-Carol," an annual tradition held by students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wherein potential audiences call the singers to request a performance over phone call.[13]. Examples of the latter are the Peloponnesian Christmas carol "Christoúgenna, Prōtoúgenna" ("Christmas, Firstmas"), the Constantinopolitan Christmas carol "Kalēn hespéran, árchontes" ("Good evening, lords"), and the New Year's carol "Archimēniá ki archichroniá" ("First of the month, first of the year"). According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,[17] about 500 have been found. Although it is a Christmas carol in Wilhousky's English lyrics, in original Ukrainian lyrics it is a Generous Eve carol (shchedrivka [uk], Ukrainian: щедрівка), having nothing with Christianity. Corde natus ex Parentis (Of the Father's heart begotten) by the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 413) is still sung in some churches today.[2]. Greek tradition calls for children to go out with triangles from house to house on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and Epiphany Eve, and sing the corresponding folk carols, called the Kálanda [el] or Kalanta Xristougenon, the word deriving from the Roman calends). It was 202 years ago when "Silent Night" was first heard by Austrian villagers attending Christmas Eve mass in St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf. Basil and the New Year, and to the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, along with wishes for the household. The Meaning of 'Vive la France!' Most churches have special services at which carols are sung, generally combined with readings from scripture about the birth of Christ; this is often based on the famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge. The Fascinating Story and Lyrics of 'The First Noel' in French. Before he wrote A Christmas Carol, the holiday wasn’t celebrated in England and America the way it is today. A Christmas Carol was the most successful book of the 1843 holiday season. Similar events are now held all over Australia, usually arranged by churches, municipal councils, or other community groups. William Garnet "Billy" James (1892–1977) wrote music for Christmas carol lyrics written by John Wheeler (both men worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission). The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. How did this simple melody, with its words of comfort, become a beloved hymn of peace throughout the world? In 1994, an original manuscript was found in Mohr's handwriting, with Gruber named as composer. For the composition by Cornelius, see, "Kalanta" redirects here. Christmas carols are very popular in Poland, where they have a long history, the oldest dating to the 15th century or earlier. In the 13th century, in France, Germany, and particularly, Italy, under the influence of Francis of Assisi a strong tradition of popular Christmas songs in regional native languages developed. "Dans cette étable" and "Venez Divin Messie" are also popular Christmas carols. A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens From Stave 1, ‘Marley’s Ghost’ – Scrooge is visited by two men collecting money for the poor. Some carols like "Personent hodie", "Good King Wenceslas", and "The Holly and the Ivy" can be traced directly back to the Middle Ages, and are among the oldest musical compositions still regularly sung. [1] Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music. The origin of the tune is disputed. Going from house to house from New Year's Day to 6 January, the children sing religious songs and are called "star singers". It's a song about a calm and bright silent night, and the wonder of a tender and mild newborn child, words written in 1816 by a young priest in Austria, Joseph Mohr, not long after the Napoleonic wars had taken their toll. The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!" Performers at the concerts include opera singers, musical theatre performers and popular music singers. With the decline in popularity of the villancicos in the 20th century, the term became reduced to mean merely "Christmas carol". 8. The movie was released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 6, 2009. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. Popular Spanish villancicos include "Los pastores a Belén" and "Riu, riu, chiu: El lobo rabioso" and "Los peces en el río". appears to be a wassailing song (which is sung during drinking or while requesting ale), but is described in the British Library's Cottonian Collection as a Christmas carol. Some compositions have words that are clearly not of a religious theme, but are often still referred to as "carols". "Lasst uns froh und munter sein" ("Let us be happy and cheerful"), "Kling, Glöckchen", ("Ring, Little Bell"), "Ihr Kinderlein, kommet" ("Oh, come, little children") and "Schneeflöckchen, Weißröckchen" (lit. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. [citation needed] Hymns Ancient and Modern 1861–1874 included several carols. Early, Latin forms of carols such as "Christ was born on Christmas Day", "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" and "Good King Wenceslas" can be found in this book. Church and college choirs celebrate with special programs and online recordings. This was a consequence of the fact that the Lutheran reformation warmly welcomed music. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. Shepherds quake at the sight! Camerata Sings Christmas Carols Live on WRTI. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst. A Christmas Carol Christina Rossetti - 1830-1894 In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In … Looking for the perfect Spotify playlist for the holidays? [15] The first English translation was in 1871 where it was published in a Methodist hymnal. Composers such as Arthur Sullivan helped to repopularise the carol, and it is this period that gave rise to such favourites as "Good King Wenceslas" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear", a New England carol written by Edmund H. Sears and Richard S. Willis. Check out WRTI's Classical and Jazz holdiay playlist here! The Herald Angels Sing" was in William Sandys' 1833 collection[7] Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern. A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens. Their written versions starts in the 15th century. Silent night, holy night! 1000 AD; it is traditionally associated with the city of Kotyora in the Pontos (modern-day Ordu, Turkey). Almost all the well-known carols were not sung in church until the second half of the 19th century. People in the audience hold lit candles and join in singing some of the carols in accompaniment with the celebrities. In the past were usually being song by shepherds and their families in market squares and in front of churches. Carol tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation resulting from a supernatural visit by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet to Come. I should like to have given him something: that's all." Many carols which have gained popularity today were printed in Piae Cantiones, a collection of late medieval Latin songs which was first published in 1582. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Nevertheless, their musical variety remains very wide overall: for example carols from Epirus are strictly pentatonic, in the kind of drone polyphony practised in the Balkans, and accompanied by C-clarinets and fiddles; just across the straits, on Corfu Island, the style is tempered harmonic polyphony, accompanied by mandolins and guitars. It is not clear whether the word carol derives from the French "carole" or the Latin "carula" meaning a circular dance. Silent night, holy night, Son of God, love's pure light. It was sung in churches, in town squares, even on the battlefield during World War I, when, during a temporary truce on Christmas Eve, soldiers sang carols from home. Although this is sometimes taken as a reference to the three kings — Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar — it may originally have represented the words Christus mansionem benedicat (Christ bless this house).[19]. Dickens helped create the idea of Christmas as a time to connect with family and show generosity to others. [38], In accordance with a medieval tradition, the Christmas Peace is declared every year on Christmas Eve in Porvoo, Finland, with a local band and male choir performing Christmas carols.[39]. Charles Dickens is often called the Father of Christmas. "Silent Night" comes from Austria. The first known Christmas hymns may be traced to 4th-century Rome. Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music the Herald Angels Sing". Silent Night was written in 1818 by Joseph Mohr and Franz X. Gruber. [10], Today carols are regularly sung at Christian religious services. Shepherds quake at the sight! Listen to this delightful performance by the Wissahickon High School Camerata Choir, led by John Conahan, when they were live on the radio and on the WRTI Facebook page on December 12th. The villancico (or vilancete in Portuguese) was a common poetic and musical form of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America popular from the late 15th to 18th centuries. Carols gained in popularity after the Reformation in the countries where Protestant churches gained prominence (as well-known Reformers like Martin Luther authored carols and encouraged their use in worship). Shortly before, in 1878, the Salvation Army, under Charles Fry, instituted the idea of playing carols at Christmas, using a brass band. Sales were good, but the publication costs had been high. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. The Nadala origins are uncertain but usually cited to be related with the Montseny and Pedraforca mountains in Catalonia (by the counties of Osona and Girona). Christ, the Savior is born, Christ, the Savior is born. Christmas carols in predominantly Catholic Philippines exhibit the influence of indigenous, Hispanic and American musical traditions, reflecting the country's complex history. The 19th-century "Cantique de Noël" (also known as "Minuit, chrétiens", adapted as ", This page was last edited on 12 March 2021, at 21:33. By Christmas it sold six thousand copies and it continued to be popular into the new year. The carol most familiar in German is probably the 19th-century "O du fröhliche".Other popular and widely sung Christmas carols are "Herbei, o ihr Gläub’gen", a German version of "Adeste fideles" (English: "O Come, All Ye Faithful"), Alle Jahre wieder ("Every year again"), Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (lit: "A rose has sprung up"), "Leise rieselt der Schnee" "(Silently the snow is falling)", "Tochter Zion, freue dich" (Daughter Zion, rejoice) and "Es ist für uns eine Zeit angekommen" ("Unto us a time has come"). How to Sing 'Silent Night' in French and English (Douce Nuit) "Bon Anniversaire": Saying Happy Birthday in French The English version of "Silent Night" is typically sung in three verses corresponding with the original 1, 6, and 2. A tune from a cantata, Festgesang, by Felix Mendelssohn in 1840 was adapted by William H. Cummings to fit Wesley's words. An organ builder and repair man working at the church took a copy of the six-verse song to his home village. The most famous survival of these early macaronic carols is "The Boar's Head". Lyrics to Popular Christmas Songs and Carols. They are normally held on Christmas Eve or the Sunday or weekend before Christmas. Isaac Watts, the "father of English hymnody", composed "Joy to the World", which has become a popular Christmas carol even though it is widely believed that Watts did not write it to be sung only at Christmas. With Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns. In 1916, Charles Lewis Hutchins published Carols Old and Carols New, a scholarly collection which suffered from a short print run and is consequently rarely available today. Silent night, holy night! Peter Cornelius included carol melodies in the accompaniment of his song cycle Weihnachtslieder Op. In England and other countries, such as Poland (kolęda), Romania (colindă) and Bulgaria (koledari), there is a tradition of Christmas caroling (earlier known as wassailing), in which groups of singers travel from house to house, singing carols at each, for which they are often rewarded with gifts, money, mince pies, or a glass of an appropriate beverage. "The backstory is that the priest went for a walk before he wrote it, and he looked out over a very quiet, winter-laden town," says composer/conductor John Conahan, who co-organized the Silent Night Sing-In with WRTI in 2018 and 2019, and created a new arrangement of the famous carol. In 1834, the Strasser family performed it for the King of Prussia. Joseph Mohr, the young priest who wrote the lyrics, played the guitar and sang along with Franz Xaver Gruber, the choir director who had written the melody. “There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. Some carols familiar in English are translations of German Christmas songs (Weihnachtslieder). Caroling is also done by marching bands, choirs, school students seeking to raise funds for trips or charity, members of folk societies, or merely by groups of well-wishers. For example: Antiquarians in the 19th-century rediscovered early carols in museums. [citation needed]. The tradition of singing carols outside of church services early in the 19th century is best illustrated by Thomas Hardy's novel "Under the Greenwood Tree" (1872). [43] After the incorporation into Christianity, their theme has been shifted to Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. The Oxford Book of Carols, first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press (OUP), was a notably successful collection; edited by the British composers Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams, along with clergyman and author Percy Dearmer, it became a widely used source of carols in among choirs and church congregations in Britain and remains in print today.