Christmas Carols

Christmas carols are typically performed by a choir in a reverberant church acoustic, with simple melodies designed to be remembered and passed down across generations. The basic meter is 4/4; older carols carry a more solemn liturgical bearing while later 19th-century carols lean toward warm, singable familiarity. Ornament is minimal — the music's job is to deliver the text clearly. Organ or piano typically supplies the harmonic ground. Many of the most familiar texts and tunes were either standardized or invented during the Victorian revival of the form in 19th-century England.

The carol form goes back to medieval Europe, where it described a circle dance with a refrain; over time the term narrowed to seasonal hymns associated with the Nativity. By the 15th and 16th centuries carols were a recognizable genre, surviving the upheavals of the Reformation and the religious wars. The 19th-century Victorian revival — Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol' (1843) and the publication of collections like 'Christmas Carols New and Old' (1871) — reinvented the genre as the warm, family-centered tradition the contemporary world inherits.

Listen for how the harmonic motion stays simple and consonant in service of the singalong, but how the choir's voicing — particularly in the descant lines on the final verse — can lift familiar tunes into something cathedral-scaled.

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge sing 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing' and 'Once in Royal David's City' at their annual 'Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols' on Christmas Eve — broadcast since 1928.

The familiar tune of 'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing' is adapted from a Mendelssohn cantata composed in 1840 to celebrate the invention of printing — Mendelssohn himself doubted the music was suitable for sacred use. 'Silent Night' was written in Oberndorf, Austria in 1818, much more recent than its 'ancient carol' aura suggests.