If you enjoy this timeline, why not find out more about Christmas carols by reading our ‘History of Christmas Carols’?
Angelus ad virginem
This Latin Carol was probably composed by a 13th-century Franciscan monk. It tells the story of the annunciation (Angel Gabriel’s message to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the mother of Jesus). It must have been popular in the Middle Ages, as it appears in a number of manuscripts and is even mentioned in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale.
In dulci jubilo
Translated as ‘in sweet rejoicing’ this ‘macaronic’ (multi-lingual) carol has alternate lines in Latin and German. It was used by Bach as the theme of a chorale prelude (BWV 729). It reached a new audience when it was given a ‘folky’ feel in an arrangement by Mike Oldfield in the 1970s.
There is no rose
This beautiful carol is included in the Trinity Carol Roll, a manuscript in the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It has verses in Middle English with Latin refrains. Many contemporary composers, including Benjamin Britten, John Joubert, Cecilia McDowall and Lucy Walker, have chosen to set the text to new music.
Song of the Nuns of Chester
This haunting lullaby is found in a ‘Processional’ (a manuscript containing music and text for liturgical processions) that originates from St Mary’s Convent in Chester. It is a single line of melody with a repeating refrain, alternating between ‘lully lully lu’ and ‘by by by’. A number of contemporary composers have developed this simple melody by adding additional vocal parts or instruments, such as the organ or handbells.
The Coventry Carol
Probably the least joyful of all well-known carols, this is a lament for the children slaughtered in Bethlehem on the orders of King Herod. It was originally performed as part of a mystery play called ‘The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors’. The Coventry Mystery Plays would have been performed in the streets of the town by various guilds of tradespeople. Although we now sing the song at Christmas, In the Middle Ages, mystery plays were actually performed at Corpus Christi, which falls in May or June, so this song did not begin life as a Christmas carol at all!
Riu riu chiu
This is a Spanish ‘villancico’ (a part-song similar to a madrigal) whose text celebrates the immaculate conception and the nativity. Its syncopated rhythm gives it a dance-like feel. It alternates solo verses with a refrain sung in parts. Some say the words ‘Ríu ríu chíu’ represent the call of a kingfisher or a nightingale, others that it represents shepherds calling their sheep. The song uses imagery of a lamb (the Virgin Mary) being protected from a wolf (sin).
Gaudete
This lively carol in Latin comes from a Swedish collection of songs entitled Piae Cantiones. The refrain, ‘Gaudete, Christus est natus’ means ‘Rejoice, Christ is born’. Like ‘Ríu ríu chíu’, it is made up of solo verses and a refrain sung in parts. It received renewed popularity when recorded by the folk-rock group Steeleye Span in the 1970s.
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
This German carol is often sung to a harmonisation from 1609 by Michael Praetorius. It uses the popular imagery of the Virgin Mary as a rose in bloom and traces her ‘roots’ to Jesse, the father of David.
The Wexford Carol
This beautiful carol originates from Enniscorthy in County Wexford in the Republic of Ireland. Its date of origin is uncertain, as it was passed orally from one generation to the next for many centuries. Some say it harks back to the 12th century, but it is more likely to come from the sixteenth century or later. It came to wider attention in the nineteenth century, when William Grattan Flood, then Director of Music at St Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, submitted it for publication in the Oxford Book of Carols. Its haunting melody is in part due to its being in the mixolydian mode, with the flattened seventh creating an aura of introspection and contemplation.
While Shepherds watched
This carol was published in a supplement to Tate and Brady’s New Version of the Psalms of David, therefore becoming, at the time, the only Christmas hymn sanctioned by the Church of England for use during worship. Its text is by Nahum Tate, who also wrote the libretto for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The carol has been sung to many different tunes. In the Sheffield pub carolling tradition, it is sometimes sung several times in one evening, each to a different melody.
Hark the Herald
This carol is by the famous Methodist hymn-writer Charles Wesley. Wesley’s original first line was ‘Hark! how all the welkin ring’, but this was subsequently changed by George Whitefield, who felt that congregations would not know what the ‘welkin’ was! It is usually sung to a melody from the 1840s by Felix Mendelssohn, from a cantata commemorating the invention of the Gutenberg printing press.
O come all ye faithful
The origin of this carol is shrouded in mystery. It has been attributed to such disparate characters as St Bonaventure, King John IV of Portugal and anonymous Cistercian monks. One theory suggests that the hymn’s original Latin version, as published by John Francis Wade in 1751, was in fact a ‘coded rallying cry’ for the Jacobite Rebellion.
The Twelve Days of Christmas
Unlike many carols, this does not have a religious theme but lists gifts given on the days between Christmas day and Epiphany (6th January). It may have originally been a memory game for children. The earliest known publication of the text appears in a book entitled Mirth Without Mischief. As native British partridges do not commonly perch in pear trees, it is possible that the last line may be a corrupted version of ‘And a partridge: une perdrix’ (perdrix being French for partridge).
Silent Night
This nineteenth-century carol was given the status of UNESCO ‘intangible cultural heritage’ in 2011. It was reputedly written for guitar on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1818, because flooding (or possibly church mice) had damaged the organ in the church of Oberndorf bei Salzburg and music was urgently needed for Midnight Mass. The carol quickly entered popular folk tradition and the name of the author and composer were, for a time, forgotten. It was not until 1995, when an autograph manuscript was discovered, that Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohr were indisputably credited with creation of the carol.
The First Nowell
This Cornish carol probably has earlier origins but was first published in 1823 by Gilbert and Sandys in a book of folk carols they had collected from singers in various parts of the UK. Their work contributed to a resurgence of interest in the Christmas carol and marked the beginning of what is sometimes considered the ‘golden age’ of Christmas carols.
Once in Royal David’s City
The text for this well-known carol appeared in a collection of poems for children by Cecil Frances Alexander. It was set to music soon after by Henry Gauntlett and has become a mainstay of the church carol service. A solo chorister (chosen at the last minute) sings the first verse at the opening of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve every year. Their voice is heard by the millions who tune into the BBC broadcast across the world.
Away in a manger
For many years, this carol, a favourite of children’s nativity plays and crib services, was falsely attributed to the 16th-century reformer Martin Luther. It is, however almost certainly from nineteenth-century America. It has been set to a number of melodies. The tune best known in Britain is ‘Cradle Song’, by the composer William J Kirkpatrick.
In the Bleak Midwinter
Christina Rossetti published her poem (entitled ‘A Christmas Carol’) in 1872. It has been set to music by a number of composers, the most famous versions being by Gustav Holst and Harold Darke. While Holst’s version is more suitable for congregational singing, Darke’s is for choir and organ, which also features solo voices. In 2008, it was voted ‘best Christmas carol’ in a poll of choral experts.
O Little Town of Bethlehem
The text for this carol was written by an American Episcopal priest, Phillips Brooks. Ralph Vaughan Williams included it in the first edition of the English Hymnal set to the tune of a ballad (The Ploughboy’s Dream) which he collected from a singer in the Surrey village of Forest Green, the name by which the tune is now known.
Carol of the bells
This is a Ukrainian carol also known as ‘The Little Swallow’. Written in 1916 by Mykola Leontovich, the text tells of a swallow which flies through a window to proclaim a plentiful year for the household. When the American choral director Peter Wilhousky heard the song, he felt the melody recalled the sound of bells, so he wrote a new English text on this theme. In Ukraine, however, ‘Shchedryk’, as it is known, remains steadfastly associated with the eve of the Julian New Year on 13 January.
Ding Dong Merrily on High
The tune we know as ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ started life as a circle dance called Branle de le’Official from a sixteenth-century dancing manual but the words were not put to this tune until 1924, when George Ratcliff Woodward published them in The Cambridge Carol Book. The unusual line ‘and io io io’ probably refers to the Latin ‘gaudio’, meaning I rejoice.
I wonder as I wander
American singer John Jacob Niles heard a young girl singing just one line of a captivating folksong while visiting the town of Murphy in Appalachian North Carolina. He was so struck with the beauty of the fragment that he extended the melody and wrote three stanzas to be sung to it.
Adam lay ybounden
The text for this carol is from a fifteenth-century manuscript of poems in a Norfolk dialect. It is, as carols go, not particularly Christmassy. Instead, its subject is the ‘Fall of Man’ from the book of Genesis. In medieval theology, Adam was believed to have been held ‘in bonds’ from the time of his death until the crucifixion of Christ. In some ways, the poem turns the Fall on its head, maintaining that, without it, the Virgin Mary would never have given birth to the Christ Child. It was set by Boris Ord, then Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge. This is his only published composition.
Shepherd’s Pipe Carol
The ‘Shepherd’s Pipe Carol’, inspired by the opera ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’, was composed by John Rutter while he was an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge. A few days after its first performance, David Wilcocks, Director of Music at King’s College, sent it to Oxford University Press. It became Rutter’s first published work and launched his career as a composer.
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree
The text for this carol was written in the 18th century, perhaps in an attempt to give Christian meaning to the ancient tradition of wassailing, which involved attaching pieces of toast soaked in ‘wassail’ onto the branches of apple trees to ensure a good harvest, as well as singing carols door-to-door. Its most well-known setting is by the British composer, Elizabeth Poston.
A babe is born all of a may
During the second half of the twentieth century, many carol composers took inspiration from the mystical texts of the Middle Ages, for many of which the original music is lost. One such was the Welsh composer William Mathias, whose strongly syncopated carol sets a text from the fifteenth century. In this context ‘may’ is a Middle English version of ‘maiden’.
Illuminare Jerusalem
When the late Sir Stephen Cleobury took up the role of Director of Music at King’s College Cambridge, he decided to commission a new carol to be performed each year at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Judith Weir was the third composer to be commissioned, in 1985. She chose a sixteenth-century Scottish poem as her text. Each verse ends with the Latin words ‘Illuminare Jerusalem’ (shine, Jerusalem). The music is for choir and organ but only the organ’s pedals are employed, playing the deep bass notes of the instrument, to accompany the Latin refrain.
The Fayrfax Carol
Thomas Adès set a text from the fifteenth-century Faryfax Manuscript of medieval carols for this commission for King’s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. The carol employs a motif of wide intervals of 6ths and 7ths, imitating a mother rocking an infant, which returns in various guises as the carol progresses. The musical language is often chromatic, reflecting the anxiety of Virgin expressed by the text. It is challenging to sing but incredibly effective.
The Shepherd’s Carol
Bob Chilcott’s carol has been described by John Rutter as ‘the most beautiful modern carol there is’. It sets a text by Clive Sansom which recounts in the first person the shepherds’ experience on the hills outside Bethlehem and their decision to visit the baby Jesus.
In the stillness
In this simple, homophonic carol, composer Sally Beamish sets a text by Katrina Shepherd which ‘beautifully captures the hushed rapture of a small parish church in a snowbound landscape, just before Christmas.’
My Lord has come
This carol is a little unusual in that the text and the music are by the same person. Will Todd’s text speaks from the heart as it simply tells of the shepherds’ and wise men’s calling to the stable, reflecting a personal calling to Christ.
This Endris Night
This carol, by Canadian composer Sarah Quartel, sets a fifteenth-century lullaby and, unusually, requires members of the choir to play handbells while they are singing.