‘Best known for his finely wrought keyboard works, early 17th-century Dutch composer Sweelinck also wrote some heavy-weight choral music, of which this joyful carol is one of his best examples’ (read more…) Hodie Christus Natus est by composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck A Mr WD Watson, so the story goes, heard it sung in St Day – Sen Day in Cornish – a village named after a Breton saint’ (read more…) 20. ‘This beautiful Cornish carol first came to light during the 19th century.

‘Ebeneezer Scrooge took exception to this traditional English carol in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, reacting so furiously to it that the carol singer on the other side of the door ran away ‘in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost’’ ( read more…) 21. The best pieces of festive classical music.‘When Worcester Cathedral’s organist Ivor Atkins came across Cornelius’s 19th-century song ‘Die Könige’ he knew he had struck gold’ ( read more…) ‘Few composers writing in recent years have had as big an impact on the British choral scene as Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)’ ( read more…) 23. ‘On Christmas Eve 1818 priest Joseph Mohr turned up on the doorstep of his friend Franz Xaver Gruber and asked him to write a Christmas carol’ ( read more about how the carol Silent Night was composed here…) 24.

Epic seven ring of glory