The carol “Ding Dong Merrily on High” is of French origin, the tune first appearing as a secular dance in Thoinot Arbeau’s (1519–1593) Orchésographie. The English text is by composer George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848–1934), and the carol was first published in The Cambridge Carol-Book (1924). The text displays the composer’s interest in church bells and change ringing. Woodward employs a macaronic treatment of text, the use of both Latin and the vernacular, a practice that flourished in Medieval Europe. The Irish composer Charles Wood (1866–1926) harmonized the tune in the original publication, and various choral arrangements have come about in more recent years, including versions by Sir David Willcocks and Mack Wilberg. Music Director of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (formerly known as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir), Wilberg (b. 1955) is a respected composer, conductor, and arranger whose music has been performed at the funerals of three US presidents. His arrangement of “Ding Dong Merrily” was the annually commissioned carol for the 2007 Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge University. Unlike previously published arrangements, Wilberg’s setting uses a virtuosic organ accompaniment to provide playful, buoyant interludes between the sung stanzas.

German composer Franz Xaver Biebl (1906–2001) studied composition in Munich and served as an assistant professor of choral music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. While serving as choirmaster for a parish in Bavaria, Biebl composed the motet “Ave Maria” for a choir of firemen. While the work gained virtually no popularity in Germany in the ensuing years, it made its way to America by way of the Cornell University Glee Club. The American choral ensemble Chanticleer added “Ave Maria” to its repertoire in 1989, including it regularly on Christmas programs. Biebl made a mixed choir arrangement of the motet, and his American publisher, Hinshaw, sold almost 700,000 copies over a twenty-five year period.

Biebl set part of the text of the Angelus, a Roman Catholic devotion commemorating Christ’s incarnation. The prayer is structured as three versicles and responses alternating with recitations of the “Hail Mary.” In the mixed choir setting, the versicles/responses are sung by a soloist in the manner of plainsong, alternating with the lush texture of double choir. Rather than alternating between SATB choruses, Biebl uses alternating choruses of men and women, which come together for one of the most ravishing “Amens” in all the repertoire.

Grammy award-winning British composer and conductor James Whitbourn (1963–2024) was educated at Oxford. In his early career, he produced a number of highly regarded programs for the BBC. Whitbourn’s compositions include several large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, born out of his association with the BBC Philharmonic. A happy partnership with Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey resulted in two recordings of his music on the Naxos label. 

Whitbourn often collaborated with the librettist Robert Tear (1939–2011), a Welsh tenor famed for performances in Benjamin Britten’s operas. Tear’s poem “The Magi’s Dream” is a delightfully colorful depiction of the Christmas-Epiphany story, in which three Magi from the East (sometimes referred to as “wise men” or “kings”) travel to Bethlehem to pay homage to the Christ Child. But there is a dark side to the story. In the Gospel of Matthew, we read that King Herod was threatened by all that was prophesied about this Christ Child. He ordered the Magi to go and find the child, “that I may come and worship him.” This becomes a sinister sort of leitmotif throughout Whitbourn’s “The Magi’s Dream,” as the three are warned in a dream not to return to Herod. We read several verses later in the Gospel account that Herod orders the death of all male children up to the age of two, an event now commemorated as the Slaughter of the Innocents. Whitbourn’s anthem delicately balances the playful imagery of mice and camels with the horrific reality of what followed the Magi’s dream. The use of the organ goes beyond mere accompaniment; rather, it functions as an equal partner to the choir, a commentator in the story.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to know how many motets Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) composed because some are lost, and some attributions cannot be authenticated. A number of Bach’s motets were probably composed for funeral services, including “Komm, Jesu, komm” BWV 229. Composed in Leipzig in 1731/1732, Bach set a pre-existing text by Paul Thymich (1656–1694), a teacher at Leipzig's Thomasschule where Bach would later serve as Kantor. The text is based on the Gospel of John in which Jesus says “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Bach scores the work for double choir, seemingly imitating the Venetian polychoral style and exploring all the possibilities of two choirs in dialogue. The motet is composed in two movements, a concerto and an aria. The first comprises five verses of the poem treated within three contrasting sections. One hears the struggling soul on “the bitter path”, depicted by a dissonant descending interval, finally discovering “the right path, the truth, and the life,” culminating in the movement’s longest section, a menuet. The closing movement, an aria rather than a chorale, sets the eleventh verse of Thymich’s poem. Here, the “bitter path” has been transformed into the “true path to life,” with a closing melisma upon which the soul seems to ascend towards the heavens.

English composer, conductor, editor, and arranger Sir John Rutter (b. 1945) was educated at Clare College, Cambridge, where he later became chapel music director from 1975–1979. In 1981, he founded the Cambridge Singers, with whom he has produced numerous recordings. Rutter’s choral music, in particular his Christmas carols, are beloved the world round. “What sweet music,” a setting of poetry by Anglican cleric Robert Herrick (1591–1674), was the 1988 commission for the annual King’s College, Cambridge Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The anthem represented for Rutter “… the first opportunity I had to put pen to paper for the choir in my long and friendly association with King’s College. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to write for the slot in the service immediately after the reading about the journey of the Wise Men—the chance to highlight in the text the idea of the gifts that we can bring.” While this carol first made its way to the US by way of a Volvo commercial, it has since become regarded as one of Rutter’s most finely crafted compositions.

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English composer Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) has risen to prominence in the world of opera. Likewise, his choral music has become increasingly popular, particularly in the Anglo-Episcopal tradition. Dove’s Missa Brevis (“short Mass”) was commissioned by the Cathedral Organists’ Association for a performance during their conference in Wells in 2009 and first performed by the choir of Wells Cathedral. Not surprisingly, considering the intended audience, the “Gloria” movement is a tour de force for the accompanying organist. Melodically rather minimalist, Dove’s “Gloria” is rhythmically driven from start to finish, with mixed meter and syncopation as salient features in this evocation of the “Song of the Angels.”

The ancient text “O magnum mysterium” is a responsorial chant from Matins of Christmas. The text highlights the wondrous absurdity of animals in a manger stall occupying space with God incarnate. Such a provocative text has inspired numerous composers over the centuries, the most famous being Thomas Luis de Victoria (c. 1548–1611), perhaps the finest Spanish composer of the Renaissance. Victoria’s beloved Renaissance setting is juxtaposed with that of living American composer, Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943), illustrating the inspirational power of the text even to this day. 

An integral part of Bach’s position as Kantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig included composing cantatas for Sundays and major feasts of Christian liturgical year. Often two cantatas were performed, one before and one after the sermon. “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” BWV 140 has become one of Bach’s most cherished cantatas. Composed for the 27th Sunday after Trinity in 1731, this cantata is based on the three stanzas of Philipp Nicolai’s hymn, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (1599). The text recounts the parable of the Ten Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew, and, therefore, is often performed during the season of Advent. Typical of Bach’s cantatas, the work is largely driven by sequences of recitative, solos, and duets, with the chorus used for only the outer movements. The authorship of the inner movement texts remains unknown, but they are clearly based on the Biblical Song of Songs, a collection of love poetry. 

Bach sets the first stanza of Nicolai’s hymn text in the first movement, a Baroque chorale fantasia with the cantus firmusor chorale tune sung in long notes by the sopranos. The accompanying strings and reeds play in the double-dotted rhythmic style associated with a classic French overture. Bach and his audience would have associated this musical texture with the stateliness of the court and the entrance of a king (“Indeed, the Bridegroom comes”). The second stanza is set in movement four and has become a popularly excerpted work, largely in part due to Bach’s own transcription of it for organ solo within the so-called Schübler Chorale collection. The final movement sets the third stanza as a four-part chorale. Inner movements include two duets between Jesus and the Soul (3 and 7), featuring violin and oboe obbligato, respectively. These love duets give a glimpse of what Bach might have achieved as an opera composer had he ever taken such a position. 

The English musicologist and Bach scholar William G. Whittaker referred to this work as “a cantata without weaknesses, without a dull bar, technically, emotionally and spiritually of the highest order, its sheer perfection and its boundless imagination rouse one's wonder time and time again.” 

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-Dr. Kirk Rich