Christmas Carols: From Village Green to Church Choir

Description

Everyone loves a Christmas carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic. But how did they get that magic? In Christmas Carols Andrew Gant tells the story of some twenty carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unravelling a captivating - and often surprising - tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys, choirboys, monks and drunks. We delve into the history of such favourites as 'Good King Wenceslas', 'Away in a Manger' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', discovering along the way how 'Hark, the Herald Angels Sing' came to replace 'Hark, how all the welkin ring' and how Ralph Vaughan Williams bolted the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth-century American pilgrim to make 'O Little Town of Bethlehem'. Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions.

Andrew Gant is a composer, choirmaster, church musician, university teacher and writer. He has directed many leading choirs including The Guards' Chapel, Worcester College Oxford, and Her Majesty's Chapel Royal. He lectures in Music at St Peter's College in Oxford, where he lives with his wife and their three children. His books for Profile are Christmas Carols andO Sing Unto the Lord.

Andrew Gant provides us with a fluent but flinty digest of the modern scholarship concerning 22 of our favourite seasonal songs. -- Kathryn Hughes * The Guardian * Gant's detective-story accounts of 22 Christmas melodies is a delight -- Christopher Hart * Sunday Times * Scholarly but conversational in in tone and rich in picturesque detail. -- Kirsty McClusky * The Tablet *