It's one of those things which has been around so long that we take it for granted and imagine that it's always been there.
Christmas in our family has never been Christmas until we've heard the annual live broadcast from King's College Cambridge Chapel in Cambridge of the Christmas Eve service of Nine Lessons and Carols. Memories flood back of Mum busily making mince pies and preparing the turkey in the kitchen of our London home to the accompaniment of King's carols; of sitting in my isolated house in North Wales with the fire crackling in the grate, listening to King's before heading into Bangor for our own cathedral carols; of sitting in my car looking out over Lough Foyle in Ireland as I filled the time between services at the cathedral where I was Organist and Master of the Choristers, not daring to travel home over the border since the BBC FM signal once you had crossed into Donegal was always a bit ropey; of lying in my bed in Sarawak, sweating like a pig in the humidity of an equatorial night, ear pressed to my shortwave radio trying to catch King's which goes out there at around midnight; and particularly of the telephone calls immediately after the broadcast service to my father and to my choir friends and colleagues to discuss the finer points of what each year's service has brought.
I have not always liked what I have heard, but as a tradition and as a moving indicator of stability in an often unsettled world, I treat the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's as something almost sacrosanct. This year it celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Receiving the two-CD anniversary set for review was something I never would have dreamt as a young boy in the late 1950s experiencing the King's magic for the first time, and determining from what I heard to become a cathedral choirmaster myself. I know now I could never have done it better (or even anything like as well) as the Willcockses, the Ledgers or the Cleoburys of this world, but decades of experience as a critic has allowed me to listen to this objectively, even if, emotionally, it remains an unimpeachable treasure.
Here's my review published this week from MusicWeb International, from whom the disc is available for sale.

Christmas in our family has never been Christmas until we've heard the annual live broadcast from King's College Cambridge Chapel in Cambridge of the Christmas Eve service of Nine Lessons and Carols. Memories flood back of Mum busily making mince pies and preparing the turkey in the kitchen of our London home to the accompaniment of King's carols; of sitting in my isolated house in North Wales with the fire crackling in the grate, listening to King's before heading into Bangor for our own cathedral carols; of sitting in my car looking out over Lough Foyle in Ireland as I filled the time between services at the cathedral where I was Organist and Master of the Choristers, not daring to travel home over the border since the BBC FM signal once you had crossed into Donegal was always a bit ropey; of lying in my bed in Sarawak, sweating like a pig in the humidity of an equatorial night, ear pressed to my shortwave radio trying to catch King's which goes out there at around midnight; and particularly of the telephone calls immediately after the broadcast service to my father and to my choir friends and colleagues to discuss the finer points of what each year's service has brought.
I have not always liked what I have heard, but as a tradition and as a moving indicator of stability in an often unsettled world, I treat the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's as something almost sacrosanct. This year it celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Receiving the two-CD anniversary set for review was something I never would have dreamt as a young boy in the late 1950s experiencing the King's magic for the first time, and determining from what I heard to become a cathedral choirmaster myself. I know now I could never have done it better (or even anything like as well) as the Willcockses, the Ledgers or the Cleoburys of this world, but decades of experience as a critic has allowed me to listen to this objectively, even if, emotionally, it remains an unimpeachable treasure.
Here's my review published this week from MusicWeb International, from whom the disc is available for sale.

This is a notable year
for King’s College Chapel Choir, Cambridge.
It marks their final Christmas under their long-serving director,
Stephen Cleobury, who retires next year after 37 years in post, it sees the 90th
anniversary of the first BBC broadcast of the Christmas Eve service from the
chapel (a worldwide broadcast which has made the chapel choir not just internationally
famous but the yardstick against which almost all other choirs are measured),
and it celebrates the centenary of the first ever service of Nine Lessons and
Carols devised by Eric Milner-White for annual use in the college chapel. It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that
this year also marks the centenary of the ending of the First World War, and
the fact that the first King’s carol service was in the month following the
signing of the Armistice is no mere coincidence. As Timothy Day’s fascinating booklet essay on
the history of the service makes plain, Milner-White “was fired by his love of
this place [and] the horror he had experienced in the trenches”. Day goes on to illustrate just how vital the
annual service has become in creating a sense of unity and hope even in times
of great international upheaval, and how iconic, and vital to national
identity, the annual broadcast of the service has become.
Although one must assume
that many of the BBC broadcasts have long been lost – do there exist anywhere
copies of the broadcast made under the directorship of A H Mann (I’d love to
sample his “Dickensian drama and vehemence, with pianississimos and fortississimos
all over the place”, as Day enticingly describes his style of conducting), and while I believe a 1954
recording under Mann’s successor, Boris Ord (“with ‘t’s’ and ‘d’s’ synchronised
with unerring precision”) is in the possession of the BBC, are there any
others? - one assumes most of the broadcasts made between 1957 and 1982 under
David Willcocks and Philip Ledger survive.
The first of this pair of CDs has rooted out carols broadcast from
King’s in 1958, 1963, 1978 and 1980, as well as seven of the broadcasts from
Cleobury’s term in office (1985, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2007 and 2017). For those of us brought up in the Willcocks
era, the fact that just five carols from his broadcasts are included (Ledger is
even less well represented, with a mere three from his era) is a
disappointment; but perhaps now that the vault has been unlocked, we might have
access to more of this priceless archive in the years ahead.
We will all have our minor
quibbles about the historical balance or the inclusion/exclusion of certain favourites;
while it is good to hear the 1985 broadcast of the premiere of Judith Weir’s
excellent Illuminare, Jerusalem there
is no shortage of commercial recordings of it sung by the King’s choir, one
wonders at the inclusion of Bach’s Passion Chorale to the words “How Shall I
Fitly Meet thee?”, against which it would not only have been good to have an “O
Little Town of Bethlehem” in any of the various versions broadcast over the
years. And given that this year also
marks the bicentenary of the composition of “Silent Night”, it would have been appropriate
to have one of the many versions of that popular carol sung by King’s over the
years. But such quibbles should not cloud
the sense of sheer delight which courses through everyone’s veins at this generous
mining of the archive.
In the Willcocks era the
choir had a wonderfully smooth and richly blended quality (Day rightly
describes it as “other-worldly”), perhaps emphasised in these BBC broadcasts;
which also serve to remind us of the general ill-health of a nation where
smoking was still the norm – it is a long time since I have heard so much
unrestrained coughing from a congregation, even in the depths of an East Anglian
winter. It is good to hear the Willcocks
descant and re-harmonisations of the last two verses of “O Come All Ye Faithful”
sounding fresh and committed from his 1963 broadcast, as well as his glittering
arrangement of the Sussex Carol from
the same year (the organist, unattributed on the recording itself, would have
been, if my memory serves me correctly, none other than Andrew Davis who has
gone on to somewhat greater things on the conductor’s rostrum). From the Willcocks broadcasts, we also have
Boris Ord’s “Adam Lay yBounden”, a carol which has been something of a fixture
in the annual broadcasts ever since.
Philip Ledger created a
sound with rather more edge than Willcocks, and that is beautifully
demonstrated in a neat, manicured performance of In Dulci Jubilo, taken from the 1980 broadcast. His own musical arrangements are restricted
to his descant to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” (from the 1978 service, and
something which has never really broken out from under the shadow of Willcocks’
famous one) and his rollicking arrangement of “I saw Three Ships”, which is
included in the second disc of this two-disc set, not taken from BBC broadcasts
but recorded mostly in July of this year.
The initial impression
from the Cleobury broadcasts was just how feminine the boys sound – in “The
Holly and the Ivy”, taken from the 1994 broadcast, the treble soloists sound
remarkably like female undergraduates.
But perhaps the most obvious changes documented by this disc is the
expansion of the carol repertory through commissions. In addition to the Judith Weir premiere, we
hear specially commissioned carols from Thomas Adès (The Fayrfax Carol, 1997), Bob Chilcott (The Shepherd’s Carol, 2001), John Rutter (Dormi Jesu, 2007), Arvo Pärt (Bogoróditse
Djévo, 2007), Michael Berkeley (This
Endernight) and Huw Watkins (Carol
Eliseus). In addition, new carols by
Carl Rütti (his superlative version of “I Wonder as I Wander” taken from the
2000 broadcast), James Whitbourn (The
Magi’s Dream), John Joubert (There Is
No Rose) and Richard Elfyn Jones (Adam’s
Fall) pay testament to the focus on contemporary Christmas music which has
been such a major feature of the King’s legacy in the Cleobury years. On a personal note, I’m delighted that they
have included the jovial arrangement of “We Three Kings of Orient Are” by my
former organ teacher, Martin Neary, as well as “Can I not Syng with Hoy”
composed in 1972 by that veritable and venerable living legend amongst British
organists, Francis Jackson.
There are some duplications
between carols taken from the BBC broadcasts and those included on the
newly-recorded second disc. These mostly
are in different arrangements – Simon Preston’s virtuoso (for the organist) “I
Saw Three Ships” (slightly chaotic in the 1994 broadcast) is countered by
Philip Ledger’s on the second disc, while Cleobury closes the second disc with
his own descant to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”. But to have Willcocks’ “O Come All Ye Faithful”
twice, in performances made over half a century apart, only goes to show just
how iconic this has become, and also how significant has been King’s College
Cambridge’s contribution to the core repertory of Christmas music. Without King’s, Christmas just would not be
the same, and this wonderful treasure trove of outstanding singing and
superlative music making merely scratches the surface of what is a major
musical legacy.
Thank you for your thorough review. Your love of the King's College Christmas Eve services shines throughout your writing.
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