Kings College Cambridge: 100th Annual Lessons & Carols

On Christmas Eve, King’s College Cambridge will conduct its Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols service. First started in 1918, this will mark the 100th service.

The service starts at 3pm GMT, 10am EST, 7am PST, and will be broadcast live by BBC 4, over FM in the U.K. and over the Internet. By my calculation, it will be the 90th broadcast on the BBC.

The program includes a detailed history of the service. It helpfully notes that since 1919, each service has begun with “Once in royal David’s city.”

The readings from the Authorized Version will overlap with those used over the past 20 years, but with slight variations. For example, as in 1997-2007, the first reading is Genesis 3:8-19 with the omission of Genesis 3:16, which was included last year:

And unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Consistent with the best practice that KCC itself established, the congregation will have its own chance to join in the singing. This year, the congregation hymns are:

1. Once in royal David’s city (verses 3-6)
2. O little town of Bethlehem (Vaughan Williams’ Forest Green, not the American St. Louis)
3. God rest you merry, gentlemen
4. O come, all ye faithful
5. Hark! the herald angels sing

Except for “God rest” replacing “While watched their flocks”, the hymns are the same as last year.

The descants are slightly different; I am beginning to realize that while big church music directors keep familiar tunes to satisfy their (paying) congregation members, they feel no constraint to keep familiar descants (which only impact 25% of their choir). KCC music director Stephen Cleobury made the following choices

1. Same as last user: used his own descant
2. Substituted his own descant, to replace Thomas Armstrong’s from the printed New English Hymnal
3. No descant
4. Kept the arrangement and descant by David Willcocks (choir director 1957-1973), as published in Willcocks & Rutter (1987: 226-227)
5. Substituted his own descant (also used in 2013 and 2014) instead of the descant by Philip Ledger (choir director 1974-1982) used in 2016 and 2012 — or the Willcocks descant (also from Willcocks & Rutter) used in 2015, 2011, 2010 and 2009

Our family is looking forward to beginning our Sunday with King’s College and their beautiful service, before we drive to our own Advent 4 service (and later on, I drive back to sing Midnight Mass).

References

David Willcocks & John RUtter, eds., 100 Carols for Choirs, Oxford University Press, 1987.