Sacred Music & History

One of the most charming and fruitful sources of traditional carols is the cradle song. The folk tradition transformed the lullabies that mothers sang to their children, and reimagined them as the Virgin Mary might have sung them to the infant Christ.

The Holy Spirit choir sings “The Coventry Carol,” composed for the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, part of the cycle of Mystery Plays performed by the local craft guilds in the City of Coventry (West Midlands, England) on the Feast of Corpus Christi. The ten plays, first recorded in the 1390s, were the most famous in England and often attended by royalty; they continued to be performed until their suppression by the Puritans in 1579. We have only two of the original plays, including this famous carol, because of the survival of the prompt-book owned by Robert Crowe, who directed the pageant in the 1530s. The lullaby refrain, sung by the women of Bethlehem, alternates with verses recounting Herod’s slaughter of the Holy Innocents.

“Balulalow” is the Scots word for “lullaby,” and several versions have circulated since the 16th century. One well-known version has been set many times, including by English composers “Peter Warlock” (Philip Heseltine) (1894-1930), Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) as part of his Ceremony of Carols, and most recently in 2012 by Canadian Mark Sirett. The singer asks “my dear hart, young Jesu sweite” to “prepare thy creddle in my spreit.” The Sloane Manuscript in the British Museum preserved “Myn Lyking” which begins, “I saw a fair mayden syttin and sing” and repeats the lullaby as heard by the observer. It has been set in remarkably contrasting styles - by Gustav Holst (1874-1934), who consciously looked to the folk roots of the carol, and a more conventional choral setting by Sir Richard Terry (1865-1938), the first and most famous director of music at Westminster Cathedral, who was instrumental in the revival of Gregorian chant and Renaissance and Tudor music in the English Catholic repertoire.

The best-known cradle song from Germany is probably “Silent Night”. In Austria and Bavaria there is a tradition dating back to medieval times of rocking a cradle with a Christ-child figure during Christmas Vespers and Matins, to the music of Wiegenlieder (cradle songs). “Silent Night” was written in 1818 for the parish church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf-bei-Salzburg. The curate, Fr. Joseph Mohr, wrote the poem, and the schoolmaster and church organist, Franz Gruber, composed the melody. A memorial service and singing of the carol still takes place in Oberndorf every Christmas Eve.

One much-loved carol that is neither a folk carol nor German is “Away in a manger.” Although popularly supposed to have been written by Martin Luther, it is American in origin and was probably written around 1883 for one of the numerous American Lutheran celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth; its first documented appearance is in Philadelphia in 1885. The two most popular settings were composed by Americans James Murray (1887) and William Kirkpatrick (1895).

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Benjamin Britten’s setting of “Balulalow” for his Ceremony of Carols (1942), sung by the St. Paul’s (London) Cathedral Choir

Richard Terry’s setting of “Myn Lyking”, sung by the choir of Guilford Cathedral, in a 1967 recording: 

Gustav Holst’s setting of “Myn Lyking”, sung by King’s: