A few days ago, I shared with you a list of 10 of the worst modern examples of Christmas music, but today, I want to turn those tables and tell you about a beautiful, timeless Christmas music tradition that I’ve fallen in love with over the past couple of years.
For 105 years, the choirs of King’s College, Cambridge have performed the traditional Nine Lessons and Carols, and for 95 of those years, the BBC has broadcast the annual program on Christmas Eve via radio and later television.
A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon the recording of the 2020 version of the broadcast in which the choirs performed in an empty cathedral because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Choral music resonates with me because of the years I spent performing choral music in middle and high school, but "Carols From King's" is an especially welcome respite in a sea of overcommercialized Christmas music and the same tunes that play in every store and on every radio.
“Our Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was first held on Christmas Eve 1918,” explains the King’s College website. “It was planned by Eric Milner-White, who at the age of thirty-four had just been appointed Dean of King’s after experience as an army chaplain which had convinced him that the Church of England needed more imaginative worship.”
In his excellent book “Hark! The Biography of Christmas,” comedian, writer, and podcaster Paul Kerensa elaborates on Milner-White’s choice of programming. (By the way, he’s going to be a guest on the faith podcast that my friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser will be launching soon — I promise.)
“With Christmas approaching, Bishop Benson's Lessons and Carols service was the perfect format for a festive service,” Kerensa writes. “He sought to retain this but add new elements. Working with college organist Arthur Henry Mann as music director, they decided that choral scholars and older Lay Clerks from the college would make up the choir, as instructed by its founder Henry VI over 400 years earlier. He'd long since passed on, but when a king orders, you obey.”
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The next year, the choirs began the service with the carol “Once in Royal David’s City,” which has become a standard opener for the service. In more recent years, a boy chorister sings the first verses, and the soloist doesn’t know until just before the service that he is the chosen one.
A decade after Nine Lessons and Carols became a tradition at King’s College, the BBC began broadcasting the service on Christmas Eve as “Carols From King’s.” The choirs record the service earlier in December for broadcast on television, while the radio broadcast is live — and longer — which, Kerensa says, makes the live broadcast “extra magical.”
The recording process hasn’t been easy, especially in the early years. In a 2016 article at The Arts Desk, Alexandra Coghlan writes that "the technical challenges of transmitting a service live from a space like King’s with its notoriously difficult acoustic must have been an almost impossibly ambitious feat in 1928, involving early Marconi-Reisz microphones slung on cables across the Chapel as well as fixed around the building."
Every year since that first broadcast, with the exception of 1930 for reasons we don't know today, "Carols From King's" has become an institution.
"The broadcast went international in the 1930s and the world has heard 'Carols From King's' each Christmas Eve since," Kerensa writes. "For many it heralds not the start of the commercial Christmas but of the domestic or spiritual Christmas. Especially for Britons far from home, the international broadcast has brought them back home, whether at Everest base camp or in the Gobi desert. In millions of British homes, it's the soundtrack to last-minute vegetable-chopping or present-wrapping."
"A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols" broadcasts live on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service at 10 a.m. EST on Christmas Eve; it will also air on public radio stations nationwide, so check local listings. "Carol's From King's" airs on the BBC on Christmas Eve, and you can pre-order a video of the service that you can download after the broadcast. Proceeds from that download benefit the music programs at King's.
You can also do like I did and explore the music from King's College, Cambridge through the many recordings of past events that are available. King's has a wealth of videos on its YouTube page, and you can discover more music on Apple Music, Apple Classical, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
Make "Carols From King's" a part of your Christmas traditions this year. You won't regret it.
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