A History of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was first held at King's on Christmas Eve 1918. It was planned by Eric Milner-White, who at the age of 34 had just been appointed Dean of King’s after experience as an army chaplain which had convinced him that the Church of England needed more imaginative worship. (He devised King's Advent Carol Service in 1934, and was a liturgical pioneer and authority during his twenty two years as Dean of York.) 

The music was then directed by Arthur Henry Mann, Organist 1876–1929. The choir included sixteen trebles as laid down in King Henry VI’s statutes, but until 1927 the men’s voices were provided partly by Choral Scholars and partly by older Lay Clerks, and not, as now, by fourteen undergraduates.

A revision of the Order of Service was made in 1919, involving rearrangement of the lessons, and from that date the service has always begun with the hymn ‘Once in royal David’s city’. In almost every year some carols have been changed and some new ones introduced by successive Organists: 

• Arthur Henry Mann;
• Boris Ord, 1929–57;
• Harold Darke (his substitute during the war), 1940–45;
• Sir David Willcocks, 1957–73;
• Sir Philip Ledger, 1974–82;
• Sir Stephen Cleobury 1982 -2018;
• Daniel Hyde, 2018 onwards

The backbone of the service, the lessons and the prayers, has remained virtually unchanged.

The original service was, in fact, adapted from an Order drawn up by E.W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, for use in the wooden shed, which then served as his cathedral in Truro, at 10 pm on Christmas Eve 1880.

His son, A.C. Benson, recalled

My father arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve – nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop. The suggestion had come from G. H. S. Walpole, later Bishop of Edinburgh.

Almost immediately other churches adapted the service for their own use. A wider frame began to grow when the service was first broadcast in 1928 and, with the exception of 1930, it has been broadcast annually, even during the Second World War, when the ancient glass (and also all heat) had been removed from the Chapel and the name of King’s could not be broadcast for security reasons. 

In 1932 the BBC began broadcasting the service on overseas programmes. It is estimated that there are millions of listeners worldwide, including those to BBC Radio Four in the United Kingdom. In recent years it has become the practice to broadcast a repeat digital recording on Christmas Day on Radio Three.  

The first television recording of a shortened version of the Christmas Eve service took place in 1954, and regular TV broadcasts took place from 1963. The televised recording was named Carols from King's and is shown on BBC Two on Christmas Eve. This is recorded by the BBC early in December and is a different service from A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.  Recordings of carols by Decca and EMI have also served to spread the fame of the Christmas services.

In these and other ways the service has become public property. From time to time the College receives copies of services held, for example, in the West Indies or the Far East and these show how widely the tradition has spread. The broadcasts, too, have become part of Christmas for many far from Cambridge.

Wherever the service is heard and however it is adapted, whether the music is provided by choir or congregation, the pattern and strength of the service, as Dean Milner-White pointed out, derive from the lessons and not the music. ‘The main theme is the development of the loving purposes of God ...’ seen ‘through the windows and words of the Bible’. 

Local interests appear, as they do here, in the bidding prayer, and personal circumstances give point to different parts of the service. Many of those who took part in the first service must have recalled those killed in the Great War when it came to the famous passage ‘all those who rejoice with us but on another shore and in a greater light’. The centre of the service is still found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and who consent to follow where the story leads.

When Stephen Cleobury came to King's in 1982 he was keen to demonstrate a commitment to contemporary music for the College's liturgies. He decided that one way of doing this would be to commission a new carol each year for inclusion in A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols; thus a new tradition was born.

The first composer to be commissioned was Lennox Berkeley, and amongst those who have followed him are Thomas Adés, Judith Bingham, James Macmillan, John Rutter, Judith Weir, to name but a few. The most recent commissions are:

Commissioned carol 2024

Three Points of Light by Grayson (Bill) Ives

Commissioned carol 2023

Cambridge alumna Cheryl Frances-Hoad composedThe Cradle, a setting of an English translation by Robert Graves of an anonymous seventeenth century Austrian text. Director of Music Daniel Hyde said “Cheryl’s carol is a masterpiece in understatement, hauntingly beautiful and so carefully written for the current generation of King’s College Choir.”

Commissioned carol 2022

Music Director Daniel Hyde commissioned Matthew Martin, Precentor and Director of College Music at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, to write the new carol for 2022. Matthew Martin's setting of the text Angelus ad Virginem serves as a tribute to the late great Simon Preston CBE (chorister and later organ scholar at King’s).

Commissioned carol 2021

Cecilia McDowall was commissioned by the Director of Music, Daniel Hyde, composing There is no rose.

Commissioned carol 2020

No commission

Commissioned carol 2019

Philip Moore was commissioned by the new Director of Music, Daniel Hyde, composing a new setting of The Angel Gabriel. 

Commissioned carol 2018

Judith Weir wrote her second commissioned carol for this service with O mercy divine for choir and cello. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.

Commissioned carol 2017

Welsh composer Huw Watkins produced a setting of part of the welsh Plygain carol, Carol Eliseus. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.

Commissioned carol 2016

Michael Berkeley composed This Endernight, based on a traditional 15th century Christmas text. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.

Commissioned carol 2015

Richard Causton, Fellow in Music at King’s, set a new poem by George Szirtes to music for his carol The Flight.

Commissioned carol 2014

Carl Rütti set to music the medieval hymn De Virgine Maria.

Commissioned carol 2013

Thea Musgrave wrote a setting of the William Blake poem Hear the voice of the Bard (1794).

Commissioned carol 2012

Australian composer Carl Vine wrote this year's carol, which was a setting of Tennyson's poem Ring Out, Wild Bells. For Vine, the poem 'inventively encapsulates the core Christian principles of community, generosity and kindness.'

Commissioned carol 2011

This year's commissioned carol was a setting of Christina Rossetti's Christmas Eve by Tansy Davies. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.

Commissioned carol 2010

The Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara composed the commissioned carol for 2010, which was simply called Christmas Carol.

Commissioned carol 2009

This year the composer Gabriel Jackson used GK Chesterton's The Christ Child Sat On Mary's Lap as the text for his carol. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.

Commissioned carol 2008

This year the commission went to the British composer Dominic Muldowney, who wrote Mary.

Commissioned carol 2007

The commission for the Festival in 2007 went to the Australian composer, Brett Dean and his composition, Now comes the dawn, which uses a poem by Richard Watson Gilder, was broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve. It is available to listen at King's College Recordings.