Carols of the Season

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There is a lot of good music for Christmas, including carols, and with the magic of YouTube we can sample them here!

Carols are of several varieties, and each kind has lovely examples.

• One kind is simply ancient songs and dances that come to us from ancient times; there are medieval carols that are still sung today that come to us from England, France, all the lands that are today Poland, Germany, Austria and Hungary, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and The Netherlands.  (There are also carols from many other nations, e.g. the Czech Republic / Slovenia, Greece and Russia, not to mention the Middle East, and quite probably Egypt.)  I am not a specialist (though I play one on the Web), so I can only offer a few examples, without supplying the research that you crave for, in your ceaseless thirst for knowledge.

• The Boar's Head Carol, is actually one of the macaronic carols mentioned below.  It is a secular carol, having more to do with the midwinter celebration than Christmas as such.  (There is nothing to connect the birth of Jesus with the winter months.)  This is probably one of the most ancient carols that are still sung today.
  

• Another sort is Victorian carols, a product of the great proliferation of carols of a couple of hundred years ago in England that are essentially Christmas hymns, that simply haven't gone through the rigorous committee process that precedes acceptance as an actual hymn.  Many of these are disguised as ancient carols, and many others of these are indeed actually ancient carols metrified and harmonized in Bach style.  One is Ding Dong Merrily on High, whose tune is is derived from an old French dance called Bransle Officiel.

• In Dulci Jubilo, a so-called macaronic carol, with Latin lines interspersed with English / German lines.
  

• The justly famous and beloved O Holy Night, Cantique de Noel, or Minuit Chretiens ("Midnight, Christians!"), with music by Adolphe Adam, who happened to be Jewish, resulting in the carol being proscribed for decades before it was finally allowed in Catholic churches. This utterly sentimental song has beautifully idealistic words.  This is a delightful performance.  The carol is also lovely sung in French by a tenor.  This is Enrico Caruso, and if you've never heard him, here's your chance.
  

• One of the most interesting and popular modern Christmas hymns is O Little Town of Bethlehem.  This one is very much an Anglo-American collaboration.  The words are by Boston (Philadelphia?) pastor Philip Brooks, who wrote them evidently inspired by a visit to the Holy Land, and the town of Bethlehem, the legendary birthplace of Jesus.  The music is, as it happens, provided by a fascinating variety of composers, because there are actually close to a dozen different tunes to which this hymn is sung.
  
  • Probably the most common tune in the USA is apparently the original one composed for the hymn by one Lewis Redner: St Louis. Here it's sung by Connie Talbot, about whom I know absolutely nothing.
  • The most common tune in Britain is Forest Green, to which in the USA many other hymns are sung, and hardly ever O Little Town.
  • A tune that found some favor is Walford Davies's Christmas Carol.
    
  • A lovely alternative is Bethlehem, by Joseph Barnby. (There was only a horrible MIDI available on the Web, so I put together this file. Unfortunately, there are some clumsy mistakes in my arrangement of Barnby's harmony, which I should have left alone...)  The original tune and harmony is available at the site The Hymns and Carols of Christmas.
    

• Another sort is broadly derived from Christmas hymns, which in turn have many sources, many of them German: e.g. Hark the Herald Angels Sing, whose tune, attributed to F. Mendelssohn, was simply a hymn-tune from one of the many hymn collections he knew, with his wonderful harmony (subsequently improved by David Willcox, and the usual suspects).  
  

•  The poster boy of Christmas Hymns, at least where I grew up, is of course Adeste Fidelis: O come, all ye faithful, words adapted from Prose for Christmas Day, by John of Reading, a British Monk of the fourteenth century.

• Also well known:  Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.

• Let all mortal flesh keep silent  I haven't found a decent recording of this on the Web, but I'll provide a link when I do.  This hymn is intended to be sung unison, and the tune is variously called Picardie, or French Carol.
  

• There are also modern carols, simply compositions by known composers, to supplement the musical diversity available for church and university choirs. 

• One beautiful example is "The Little Road to Bethlehem", by Michael Head.  This performance is exceptional.  (The performance depends critically on the soprano soloist, as well as the treble line.)

• Here's another one: The Three Kings, by Peter Cornelius.  The chorale that weaves through it is Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern, "How brightly beams the morning star", a hymn beloved of Johann Sebastian Bach. (In fact, J. S. Bach's opus no. 1 is a cantata based on that carol.)
  

• Another one: A Spotless rose, by Herbert Howells.  The singing is good, despite all the coughing.  I love the moment when the baritone sings: "The blessed babe..."  Gorgeous!
  

• Here is the little door, sung by Chanticleer, a wonderful American male voice choir.  Words evidently by G. K. Chesterton.
  

• The most famous Christmas carol, arguably, is Silent Night (Stille Nacht, in German), composed by Francis Xavier Gruber. I have written about it earlier, last year.
  

• The Blessed Son of God, music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a carol with very modern harmonies (redolent with major sevenths, and lovely suspensions). The video is a little annoying; just don't look at it.  (If you search on YouTube, there is a beautiful recording sung by a Dutch quartet, where the lines of the harmony are very clear.  Unfortunately it seems a heavy bandwidth is needed for it, for whatever reason.)
  

• Modern carols that derive from folk songs from 'foreign lands', e.g. India, Japan and Korea.  

•  An instance is "Sleep in my arms", created by Malcolm Sargent from a Korean folk song Arirang.
  

• Carols that are metrizations of chants.

• A well-known instance is Veni, veni Emmanuel, which is the source for our well-loved O Come, O Come Emmanuel.  The metrization succeeds is preserving the beautiful modal tune.
  

• Finally, songs that are not carols at all, but simply Christmas songs, that are essentially modern popular songs with a holiday theme, e.g. Jingle Bells, and Feliz Navidad, not to mention Grandma got runover by a reindeer.  (This can be easily converted into a bona fide carol with a few glorias and hallelujas inserted into it.)One of my personal favourites is the Christmas Waltz, by The Carpenters.  (There is an unfortunate fleeting emphasis on "things", entirely unintended, I'm sure.)
  

Archimedes