Service Music for Advent Lessons & Carols

November 30, 2025

by Dr Phil Rogers

Click here to watch the service.

 

Es ist ein ros | organ prelude 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) composed this chorale prelude in 1896; it is one of his Eleven Chorale Preludes Op. 122, written at the end of his life and published posthumously in 1902.  The work is based on the hymn that we know in translation as “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming,” which has its beginning in the work of an unknown author before the 17th century; the words were printed in Gebetbuchlein des Frater Conradus in 1582. The tune first appeared in print in the Speyer Hymnal, Cologne 1599.  The hymn is most commonly sung as harmonized by the German composer Michael Praetorius in 1609.  The rose of the hymn is the Messiah (not the Virgin Mary, as is often said), “e’er blooming,” that “dispels the darkness.”  The prelude is a traditional opening of the Advent Carol Service.

 

Matin Responsory

This text is the responsory for Matins, the first office of the day in the liturgy of the hours, on the first Sunday of Advent.  It begins, in Latin, Aspiciens a longe et ecce, video Dei potentiam venientem, “Looking from afar, behold,I see the power of God coming.”  We sing the text and the music as arranged by David Willcocks for the Advent service in King’s College, Cambridge.  Willcocks adapted music from a setting of Nunc dimittis (not Magnificat, as is usually stated) by the 16th-century Italian composer Giovanni da Palestrina.  The text is sung antiphonally by the Cantor and various parts of the choir.

 

The Responsory establishes the Advent themes of expectation and longing with the repeated phrases “Go ye out to meet him” and “art thou he that should come?”

 

Come, thou Redeemer of the earth | Veni, Redempto gentium

This hymn was written by Ambrose of Milan (c. 339-397), who was serving as the Roman governor of Aemilia-Liguria when he was unexpectedly made Bishop of Milan in 374 by popular acclamation. He was the teacher of Augustine of Hippo, who refers to this hymn in his sermon 372.  Ambrose’s hymns are the earliest surviving Latin Christian hymns, and they established a structural pattern followed by later writers for centuries.  In the liturgy of the hours this hymn was appointed for Matins daily in the week before Christmas.  Our translation is by John Mason Neale (1819-1866), with alterations by the editors of The English Hymnal.  Neale studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Suffering from chronic lung disease, he spent a year in Madeira, returning in 1846 to become Warden of Sackville College, an almshouse in West Sussex, where he remained until his death.  Neale translated 400 hymns from Latin and, especially, Greek.  The English Hymnal of 1906 contained 68 of his translations.

 

Great O Antiphons

Chanted before the Magnificat at Vespers in the week preceding Christmas, the Great O Antiphons are based on prophecies in the book of Isaiah (chapters 9, 11 and 7).  Each antiphon addresses a title of the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations), and O Emmanuel.  When the titles are reversed, their initials create the sentence “Ero cras,” meaning “I will be (with you) tomorrow.”  The central section of each Antiphon elaborates on the Messianic title, and the last section is a petition asking the Lord to come.  The antiphons were in manuscript by the 8th century, but they existed by the 6th century.  The antiphons are sung to Gregorian chant.  Each chant tune follows the same general melodic formula, though they are not identical.

“O Sapientia” is on December 17th, but in Use of Sarum it’s on the 16th because of the addition of “O Virgo, virginis” on Christmas eve; however lovely and worshipful that is, it spoils the pattern of the antiphons, all of which use titles of the Christ.  Five of the antiphons are the English verses of the hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel" as translated by J.M. Neale.

 

 

 

The truth from above  

This carol is mentioned in a list of carols in William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Explained (1823), and the text, with 16 stanzas, was printed in A Good Christmas Box of 1847.  It is also known as the Herefordshire Carol.  Ralph Vaughan Williams collected the tune in 1909 in Herefordshire (and published it in the Folk Song Society Journal).   It is the opening movement of his Fantasia on Christmas Carols of 1912, with a baritone solo and a choir humming.   Our text is 5 stanzas from those printed in the New Oxford Book of Christmas Carols, with a slight alteration, and the music is Vaughan Williams’, arranged for SATB choir and organ by Christopher Robinson, who ended his employment career as Organist and Director of Music of St John’s, College Cambridge, in 2003, but by no means his composing career.  He wrote a series of Fanfares for the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

 

On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry

The Latin original of this hymn (Jordanis oras praevia) was written by Charles Coffin (1686-1749), who was successively Principal of the Collège Dormans-Beauvais at Paris (1712) and Rector of the Université de Paris (1718).  He published a selection of his hymns in Hymni Sacri Auctore Carolo Coffin (Paris, 1736), and in the same year contributed hymns to Hymns du Nouveau Brévière de Paris (some of which Newman, a century later, included in Hymni Ecclesiae).  The translator is John Chandler (1806-1876), educated at Corpus Christi, Oxford (B.A. 1827, M.A. 1830), ordained deacon in 1831 and priest in 1832.  His translations were published in The Hymns of the Church, mostly Primitive, Collected, Translated, and Arranged for Public Use, 1841 (an enlarged version of an 1837 title).  We sing the tune Winchester New.  This German melody, first published in 1690 in Hamburg, was used in England by the Wesleys.  In 1864 William Havergal adapted it as a long measure tune and named it.  Winchester Old is an English tune commonly paired with Tate’s “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks.”

 

Creator of the stars of night | Conditor alme siderum

The author of the Latin hymn is unknown, but it probably dates from the 7th century.  It became part of the liturgy of Advent in the 9th century, normally at Vespers.  In the Sarum Breviary it is appointed for Vespers on the Saturday before the 1st Sunday in Advent, and throughout Advent on Sundays and week-days when no festival occurs.  Although Ambrosian in structure, it is not by Ambrose.  The hymn encompasses all history, from the creation in stanza 1, through the incarnation in stanza 3, to the end of time and the last judgment in stanza 5.  The translation is by John Mason Neale, who published it in Carols for Christmas-tide, which he co-edited with Thomas Helmore in 1853. The plainchant tune is coeval with the text; we sing an arrangement by Malcolm Archer (b. 1952), a former organist of Wells Cathedral and of St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

 

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme

Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608) wrote this German hymn in 1598, basing his text on the Parable of the wise and foolish Virgins in the Gospel of Matthew, but with echoes of many other books of the Bible.  Nicolai studied theology at the University of Erfurt and the University of Wittenberg, receiving a doctoral degree in 1594.  He was ordained as a Lutheran minister.  Like the Virgins, we know neither the day nor the hour when the Bridegroom will come; therefore the hymn begins, “Awake, the voice is calling us.”  Bach used this text in Cantata 140, and Mendelssohn used it in the oratorio St Paul.   We sing the middle stanza of the hymn in Bach’s setting, arranged by John Rutter (b.1945).  The English translation is also by Rutter.

 

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

Edward Bairstow (1874-1946) wrote this introit in 1906, when he was organist of Leeds Parish Church, but it was not published until 1925, when he’d been the organist and Master of the Choristers at York Minster for 12 years.  The text is the Cherubic hymn or Offertory from the Liturgy of Saint James, a translation of which had been published by John Mason Neale in 1859.  The first idea of the hymn is based on Habakkuk 2:20: “Let all the earth keep silence before him,” and Zechariah 2:23:  "Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling."  The procession of angels owes something to Isaiah’s description of the Seraphim (chapter 6), and something to the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th century).  Bairstow presents the solemn and anticipatory opening phrase in octaves in the men’s voices, marked Molto maestoso, followed by the women’s voices lifted “above all earthly thought.”  The second movement of this Eucharistic hymn places it directly in the concept of Advent: “the King of Kings and Lord of Lords cometh forth.”  At the conclusion, the men’s octaves of the opening return, now in solo voices, while all other voices continue the angels’ “alleluia” in subdued adoration.

 

Hark a thrilling voice is sounding | Vox clara ecce intonat

Based on a Latin hymn appointed for the office of Lauds in Advent, this translation is by Edward Caswall (1814-1879).  Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, Caswall was ordained to the priesthood in 1839.  He served a parish near Salisbury from 1840 to 1847, when, converted by the Tractarians, he resigned from the priesthood and was received into the Roman Catholic Church.  Two years later, after the death of his wife, he joined the Oratory at Edgbaston, Birmingham, where he remained until his death.  He was ordained to the Roman priesthood in 1852.  The hymn has had many small but not insignificant changes in wording by various hymn book editors.  An example is “thrilling” for Caswall’s “awful” in the first line.

Caswell also wrote “When morning gilds the skies.”  The tune is Merton, composed by W.H. Monk in 1850 for The Parish Choir. It maybe named for Merton College, or for its founder, Walter de Merton.  The tune was first paired with Caswall’s translation in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1862).

 

Magnificat  

The Magnificat, one of the Canticles of Evensong, and a part of the nativity narrative in the Gospel of Luke, belongs first to the “first coming” theme of Advent.  In this beautiful song the Blessed Virgin Mary responds to the angelic announcement that she will bear a son by the Holy Spirit.  But Mary’s words also belong to the “second coming” theme: when this son comes again, he will usher in a new age, scattering the proud, putting down the mighty, exalting the humble and meek.  The Magnificat was a central text in Liberation Theology because of this “subversive“ message.  The third section of the canticle places the birth of Jesus within the long sweep of biblical history, for God’s promises to Abraham and his seed were promised forever.  Herbert Murrill (1909-1952) wrote a large body of music, only a little of which is sacred music.  He was for a some time in the early 1930s Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and a church organist.  He spent the last years of World War II at Bletchley Park and then worked in the music department of the BBC.  This setting in E major is his only published setting of the Evening Canticles.  It is, however, of all his compositions the piece most often performed now.  All voices sing the opening phrase in unison, marked forte, after which the dynamic markings range from ff to pp, matching the emotions of the words.  At the opening phrase of the Gloria patri the voices return to the unison melody of the beginning.  Throughout the canticle the organ sometimes sounds and is sometimes silent.  It provides a dramatic guide, often setting the tone for an upcoming section or supporting the character of the choir part.

 

Thou shalt know him when he comes

Mark Sirett (b.1952) composed this piece when he was Organist and Choirmaster of St George’s Cathedral from 1990 to 1996.  It is dedicated to the Gentlemen and Boy Choristers of that time. The text is an anonymous poem of the 17th century.  In Sirett’s arrangement the sopranos sing the first quatrain alone, and then all voices sing that quatrain, going on to the second quatrain before repeating the opening line and adding “Amen.”  The text responds to the opening question of this service: “Art thou he that should come?”  It imagines the second coming of Messiah not, as in Handel’s oratorio, when “the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised,” but as a change in one’s state of being.  “Thou shalt know him . . . by the holy harmony which his coming makes in thee.”

 

 

 

Vesper Responsory

Part of the office of Lauds on the Vigil of the Nativity, the responsory uses language from Biblical sources.  2 Chronicles 20:17 O Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not, nor be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord will be with you.   Exodus 14:13 And Moses said unto the people, “Fear ye not. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord . . . .”  Psalm 48:9 We wait for thy loving-kindness, O God, in the midst of thy Temple (this wording is from the Geneva Bible of 1599).  We sing an arrangement by Philip Ledger (1937-2012) of music by Giovanni da Palestrina.  Ledger was, among many other positions, Dean of the School of Fine Arts and Music of the University of East Anglia (1965-1974), and Choirmaster of King’s College, Cambridge (1974-1982).

 

Lo, he comes with clouds descending

Charles Wesley’s hymn about the second coming begins with imagery borrowed from the book of Revelation (7:1).  He continues in the second stanza with echoes of the BCP Collect for Advent.  An earlier hymn, “Lo he cometh, Countless trumpets,” by John Cennick (1718-1755), prompted Wesley to write this hymn.  A Calvinistic Methodist who became a Moravian evangelist, Cennick knew the Wesleys through a mutual acquaintance, and Charles had proofread some of his hymns.  The two hymns are similar to such a degree that a later writer, Martin Madan, could use parts of each to create yet a third hymn.  The tune Helmsley has been attributed to Thomas Olivers (1725–1799) (by John Wesley) and to Thomas Arne, but it seems likely to have been given its present shape by Martin Madan, perhaps based on a tune by Olivers. Madan, who was converted by John Wesley, was later ordained and was a noted preacher; he became associated with the Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapels and eventually was appointed Chaplain of the Lock Hospital at Hyde Park Corner, a charity hospital for sufferers of sexually transmitted diseases.  An accomplished musician, Madan established an annual performance of a religious oratorio at the Chapel.  In 1763 he published A Collection of Psalms and Hymn Tunes Sung at the Chapel of Lock Hospital, containing his cento version of “Lo, he comes,” set to the tune Helmsley.