Nine Lessons & Carols
4 December 2013
The first ever celebration of Nine Lessons & Carols was held in a wooden church in Truro in 1880, but it went massive when King’s College, Cambridge, started doing it in 1918. It was first broadcast by the BBC in 1928, and, except for 1930, has been broadcast every year since. The nine lessons of the title are short Bible readings about the birth of Jesus, and they are interspersed between carols, some sung by the choir, and some congregational.
Our Hertford Nine Lessons & Carols will be at 6Â pm on Wednesday, and lead straight into the Christmas formal.
We’ll have composer James Burton with us, and the choir will sing his newly-composed carol Balulalow.
Other choral carols will be
- Parry Never weather-beaten sail
- Mathias A babe is born
- Dove The three kings
The congregational carols will be
- Once in royal David’s city (with solo)
- Of the Father’s heart begotten
- O little town of Bethlehem
- In the bleak midwinter
- O come, all ye faithful
- Hark! The herald angels sing
And the whole will be rounded off with the organ voluntary Sleigh ride as we go out.