Christmas Choral Spectacular

by Various Artists

A staple of the Christian choral tradition, the carol is most accurately defined as a religious seasonal song, of joyful character, in the vernacular and sung by the common people, and indeed the time-hallowed annual Christmas ritual of caroling, always close to the hearts of ordinary people, is essentially of peasant rather than aristocratic origin. Several of the most enduring carol-tunes date from the Middle Ages or even earlier, having first been either sacred or secular, particularly pastoral melodies, frequently of French or German origin. The latter group often have lilting rhythms, betraying their former links with courtly dancing, not infrequently out of doors, and some of these are as pagan in origin as our Christmas holly or the candles on our cake. Others may relate more specifically to, or have been at least in part inspired by the crib that from the time of St Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century has traditionally been installed in churches at Christmastide. The medieval carol, which as often dealt with earthly topics as with the Nativity, the Blessed Virgin or St Nicolas, usually favored a Latin or vernacular text arranged in simple, easily memorized stanzas with repeatable refrains, or 'burdens'. While many ancient carol-tunes are extant in manuscript, the earliest printed carols, in the collection of Caxton's pupil Wynkyn de Worde, first appeared in England in 1521. After the Reformation carols inclined in their message and mood of Christmas toward a more modern idiom. In 1833 William Sandys' seminal Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern appeared and the Victorian era saw the publication of other influential collections, including Bramley and Stainer's Christmas Carols New and Old and by the late nineteenth-century revival movements, analogous to those relating to folk-song and dance, were active in preserving ancient oral carol traditions from extinction. The trend continued into the twentieth century through various choral anthologies.