Royal Choral Society: The Shepherds' FarewellWizzard: I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day

In the old days, in the Sixties, you didn't get chocolates in Advent calendars: you just got little pictures - a ball, a trumpet or some other possible Christmas gift.

But on Christmas Eve you had double doors to open, and they always revealed a nativity scene.

So I 've made today's window double-sized and chosen two pieces of Christmas music.

First, the sublime Shepherds' Farewell from Berlioz's 1854 oratorio L'enfance du Christ. This comes from the second act as the Holy Family prepare to leave for Egypt.

That's above.

And below you will find what should have been the Christmas number 1 in 1973. Wizzard, however, lost to Slade in a sort of civil war of Birmingham rock.

Though it's fashionable to say you like Slade now, I have never forgiven them and never will.

Still, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And I hope you've enjoyed this Advent calendar as much as I've enjoyed putting it together.

Philadelphia Boys Choir: This Little Babe

Benjamin Britten has done well out of this Advent calendar, and here you can sense his genius in the extraordinary effects he gets here from a choir of boys and a single harpist.

A Ceremony of Carols, of which this is part, was composed by Britten in 1942 on his voyage back from America, where he'd been when the war broke out.

The words of "This Little Babe" are taken from Robert Southwell's Newe Heaven, Newe Warre, which was written in 1595.

They describe the infant Christ battling Satan, and the first verse runs:

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak unarmèd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

Read the full text.

Jonathan Lemalu and Winchester Cathedral Choir: Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar

This is a 19th-century German carol by the composer Peter Cornelius. It became increasingly popular in Britain as the 20th century progressed.

It was the only slightly unusual track on the album of carols that the family owned when I was a child, and it reminds me of a late winter afternoon at Hemel Hempstead School where, aged 12, I was taking part in a play with songs, put on by pupils from the first two years. As we left the rehearsal, somewhere else in the building the school choir was practising this piece.

Our play, incidentally, was The Charcoal-Burners' Son, a sort of spoof fairy tale. It was written by L. Du Garde Peach, who once fought Derby for the Liberal Party and wrote most of the Ladybird history books.

Jethro Tull: Ring Out, Solstice Bells

There's only one song it's possible to choose today. Ring Out, Solstice Bells is a track from Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Wood.

When I was 17 I thought this was the best LP there's ever been or could ever be (with the possible exception of Kate Bush's The Kick Inside.)

Choral Scholars of Arundel Cathedral: O Little Town of Bethlehem

This is not a carol, but a 19th-century American hymn. But the tune associated with it in Britain, Forest Green, was collected by Vaughan Williams in the Surrey village of that name in 1903.

My mother never cared for O LIttle Town, but "The hopes and fears of all the years" is one of the lines that did it for me as a child, along with "And dark is his path on the wings of the storm" and "The purple-headed mountains".

Jeff Buckley: Corpus Christi Carol

This can be found on Jeff Buckley's album Grace and was inspired by Benjamin Britten's setting of the carol in his choral piece A Boy Was Born. That was first performed on 23 February 1934 - the day Sir Edward Elgar died.

The Financial Times, unexpectedly, has a good article on the history of the Corpus Christi Carol:

To begin at the beginning: in late medieval England there lived a grocer by the name of Richard Hill. He kept a "commonplace book" in which he wrote down all manner of things: learned advice, pious reflections, poems, recipes, cures (a cut could apparently be treated with a pint of ale, though it’s not clear whether the ale was to be applied to the wound, or drunk), and songs, including “Corpus Christi Carol”. Only the lyric survives; Hill made no record of any music.

The recording I have of the full Britten work includes the boys of the choir from All Saints, Margaret Street. Oh how it all fits together.

Choir of St John's College, Cambridge: Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is an 18th-century poem whose author is not known. The setting here is by the 20th-century English composer Elizabeth Poston.

At the beginning of the second world war, says Wikipedia, Poston joined the BBC and became director of music in the European Service. She is said to have used gramophone records to send coded messages to agents in Europe.

She also played the piano at the wartime National Gallery lunchtime concerts organised by Myra Hess.

Boney M.: Mary's Boy Child

Boney M. were huge:

Boney M. are the only artists to appear twice in the top 11 best selling singles of all time in the UK, with Rivers of Babylon in seventh place and Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord at number 11. They are also one of six artists to sell a million copies with two singles in the same year.

And that's from Wikipedia, so it must be true.

I was pleased when Mary's Boy Child turned up in the charts because I once sang it at a primary schools' music festival. Plus "And man will live for evermore because of Christmas Day" was one of the lines that did it for me in those days.

Mind you, it was even more impressive when Cat Stevens took Morning Has Broken from our school hymn book into the top 10.

Westminster Abbey Choir: The Holly and The Ivy

I chose this because I used to enjoy singing it at school and it has the mix of pagan and Christian that makes a good Christmas.

Yet it's popularity is a recent phenomenon. Here's Wikipedia:

The song can be traced only as far as the early nineteenth century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas dating at least as far as medieval times. The lyrics and melody varied significantly in traditional communities, but the song has since become standardised. 

The version which is now popular was collected in 1909 by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, from a woman named Mary Clayton.

Joni Mitchell: River

A Christmas song for people who are lonely at Christmas! We need a song like that. – Joni Mitchell

American Songwriter explains:

River reveals one of Mitchell’s most vulnerable moments in songwriting, opening up about a breakup and the deep bond that’s difficult to shake. The lyrics of River are thought to have been inspired by the end of Mitchell’s relationship with musician Graham Nash; the two dated from 1968 through 1970.

River comes from Joni Mitchell's classic album Blue and has been recorded more times by other artists than any song of hers except Both Sides Now.

Steeleye Span: The Boar's Head Carol

The Boar's Head Carol, says Wikipedia, is a 15th-century English carol that describes the ancient tradition of sacrificing a boar and presenting its head at a Yuletide feast. The version of the carol most usually performed today is based on one published in 1521.

Steeleye Span issued this version as a Christmas single in 1977. but failed to repeat the success of Gaudete in 1973.

David Essex: A Winter's Tale

Mike Batt explains:

David Essex rang me late in 1982 - just after my return from Australia, and asked if I could write him a Christmas hit. It was already late October so we didn't have much time. I was due to be writing with Tim Rice the following day ... so I told Tim about the David Essex request, and we started thinking of ideas. ... we wrote a bit of the chorus and two lines of the verse, and then when Tim had gone home I sat and worked on it, coming up with the finished chorus and the second verse lyrics.

A Winter's Tale reached number 2 and I'm always happy to hear it in the supermarket this time of year.

Jess Dandy: I Wonder as I Wander

I Wonder as I Wander was written by the American folklorist and singer John Jacob Niles, based on a fragment of folk song he collected in the Appalachians in 1933. It has since become a favourite Christmas hymn.

Choir of KIng's College, Cambridge: Hymn to the Virgin

Is this Christmas music? Well, King's College, Cambridge, did include it in their Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in 2013, which was Benjamin Britten's' centenary year.

He was 16 when he wrote this  As Britten Pears Arts explains:

The text that Britten uses is by an anonymous poet and probably dates from about 1300. It appears in The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900, which he won as a school prize for music. 

It’s a macaronic verse; that is, a poem in which one language is introduced into the context of another. The main body of the choir sings in Middle English and another semi-chorus (or group of soloists) supplies a refrain in Latin.

Greg Lake: I Believe in Father Christmas

Honestly, you have to be 15 to think this is a good record.

My only defence is that I was 15 when it got to number 2 in the chart, prevented from being the Christmas number one only by the behemoth that was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Come to think of it, that's another record that sounds really meaningful when you are 15.

The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge: Bethlehem Down

I once quoted a Nottingham church's website on the genesis of Bethlehem Down:

By 1927 Peter Warlock was in financial difficulty, due in part to a fall in the demand for his songs. He struck up a friendship with Bruce Blunt, a journalist, poet and "bon viveur". The first record of their association was a press report about them being arrested “"drunk and disorderly" in Chelsea.

Running short of money, the two friends wrote Bethlehem Down to submit to the Daily Telegraph's annual carol contest. They duly won the prize, which was used to finance an "immortal carouse" on Christmas Eve 1927. 

The full text:

"When He is King we will give him the Kings' gifts,
Myrrh for its sweetness, and gold for a crown,
Beautiful robes," said the young girl to Joseph,
Fair with her first-born on Bethlehem Down.

Bethlehem Down is full of the starlight
Winds for the spices, and stars for the gold,
Mary for sleep, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

When He is King they will clothe him in grave-sheets,
Myrrh for embalming, and wood for a crown,
He that lies now in the white arms of Mary,
Sleeping so lightly on Bethlehem Down.

Here He has peace and a short while for dreaming,
Close huddled oxen to keep him from cold,
Mary for love, and for lullaby music
Songs of a shepherd by Bethlehem fold.

Jona Lewie: Stop the Cavalry

This, says Jona Lewie, was not written to be a Christmas hit: it's an anti-war protest song. But a mention of the festival and a burst of tubular bells works wonders.

In the event, Stop the Cavalry was kept from the top of the charts at the end of 1980 only by the newly murdered John Lennon. 

Me? I like knowing that Lewie wrote and played on the 1972 hit Seaside Shuffle. That was credited to Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs, but the band had long played together under the name Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts.

And I like the way the song reminds me of Christmas shopping in York when I was a student.

Tenebrae: In the Bleak Midwinter

The words are an 1872 poem by Christina Rossetti, and the setting by Gustav Holst dates from 1906.

Together they give you the feeling that the Nativity took place, not in the Holy Land, but in an English village.

The Ronettes: Sleigh Ride

Phil Spector released his album A Christmas Gift for You in 1963. It contained a collection of secular Christmas standards reworked in his unique 'wall of sound' style.

The tune for Sleigh Ride was composed by Leroy Anderson in 1948, with the lyrics added two years later by Mitchell Paris.

The Ronettes were a Manhattan girl group, led by Veronica Veronica Bennett who began an affair with Spector around the time this track was recorded. She married him in 1968, only to flee four years later.

In 2008 Spector was convicted of the murder of the actress Lana Clarkson, He died in prison last year.

Merry Christmas!

Mike Oldfield: In Dulci Jubilo

Mike Oldfield reminds us that carols were originally dance tunes. In Dulci Jubilo originated in medieval Germany and became popular in Britain early in the 19th century.

This version reached number 4 in the UK singles chart in time for Christmas 1975. And - believe me - there were many worse singles around that year.