Carol of the Day: Once in Royal David's City
Listening anew
This post is part of a series highlighting the music programmed for this year’s Service of Lessons and Carols, to take place on December 18 at 5:00 p.m. at St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
This carol has always been the first one sung at our Lessons and Carols. It is introduced by a solo chorister from the balcony, followed by an a cappella verse from the choir surrounding the congregation. We have never used any arrangement other than the one by Sir David Willcocks. It is a defining piece of the service.
One of the things I love is the intrinsic beauty of the text, which gets lost for many amid the pageantry of the processional. When we hear a piece so many times, year after year, we tend to get caught up in the nostalgia of our memories and forget to hear the piece anew. The text is a perfect and poetic summation of the life of Jesus: v.1 & 2 (birth), v.3 & 4 (his childhood, and a reminder of our own), v. 5 & 6 (his revelation to us as God's son, and our eventual reunion in heaven). In one carol, we are given the complete story of Christ. We could show up on Dec. 18, sing this carol, and the service would be complete with nothing more.
I thought this tidbit about the history of the text was interesting: it was written by the wife of an Anglican clergyman in 1848 to instruct church school children:
Hymns for Little Children was a collection of poems aimed to elucidate parts of the Apostles' Creed for use in Sunday schools or in the home - "Once in Royal David's City" told the story of the Nativity of Jesus to illuminate "Born of the Virgin Mary". Other well-known hymns in the collection included "All Things Bright and Beautiful" ("Maker of Heaven and Earth") and "There is a green hill far away" ("Was crucified dead and buried"). 1
This kind of artistic composition (for instruction) has disappeared today as we seem to expect children to know the tenets of faith intrinsically, or worse, to make them up as they sit fit.
So here's the traditional version. It doesn't get much better:
And here's an alternative, for fun:
