"Joy to the World" is a popular Christmas carol with words by Isaac Watts. As of the late 20th century, "Joy to the World" was the most-published Christmas hymn in North America.
Church music is music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn.
"The Holly and the Ivy" is a traditional British folk Christmas carol. The song is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 514.
"Angels We Have Heard on High" is a Christmas carol with the lyrics written by James Chadwick, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, to the music from a French song called Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes. The music is the same as the original song, though Chadwick's lyrics albeit unique and original are clearly derived and inspired, and in parts a loose translation. The song's subject is the birth of Jesus Christ narrated in the Gospel of Luke, specifically the scene in which shepherds outside Bethlehem encounter a multitude of angels singing and praising the newborn child.
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is an English traditional Christmas carol. It is in the Roxburghe Collection, and is listed as no. 394 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It is also known as Tidings of Comfort and Joy, and by variant incipits as Come All You Worthy Gentlemen; God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; God Rest Ye, Merry Christians; or God Rest You Merry People All.
Sails of Silver is an album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span.
Giles Lewin is a British violinist and bagpiper. Currently a member of The Carnival Band, he was also a founding member of the folk band, Bellowhead.
Ravenchild is the first album recorded by Maddy Prior after she stopped working with the Carnival Band.
Hang Up Sorrow and Care, recorded and released in 1995, is an album by Maddy Prior with The Carnival Band.
An Evening of Carols and Capers is an album by Maddy Prior with The Carnival Band.
In dulci jubilo is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J.M. Neale's arrangement "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" have increased its popularity, and Robert Pearsall's 1837 macaronic translation is a mainstay of the Christmas Nine Lessons and Carols repertoire. J.S. Bach's chorale prelude based on the tune is also a traditional postlude for Christmas services.
Sing Lustily And With Good Courage is an album by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. It was recorded at Valley Recordings in March 1990 and released as a CD on the Saydisc label.
Winter is the 19th studio album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span. So far it is the second of three albums made by a line-up consisting of Maddy Prior, Peter Knight, Rick Kemp, Liam Genockey and Ken Nicol. This is their first Christmas album. Most of the songs on the album are traditional folk songs, but it also includes three new pieces expressing neo-pagan views on the Winter season. It also includes a negro spiritual, "Blow Your Trumpet Gabriel", the first time the band had drawn from that particular musical genre.
The annunciation to the shepherds is an episode in the Nativity of Jesus described in the Bible in Luke 2, in which angels tell a group of shepherds about the birth of Jesus. It is a common subject of Christian art and of Christmas carols.
"Personent hodie" is a Christmas carol originally published in the 1582 Finnish song book Piae Cantiones, a volume of 74 Medieval songs with Latin texts collected by Jacobus Finno, a Swedish Lutheran cleric, and published by T.P. Rutha. The song book had its origins in the libraries of cathedral song schools, whose repertory had strong links with medieval Prague, where clerical students from Finland and Sweden had studied for generations. A melody found in a 1360 manuscript from the nearby Bavarian city of Moosburg in Germany is highly similar, and it is from this manuscript that the song is usually dated.
Medieval folk rock, medieval rock or medieval folk is a musical subgenre that emerged in the early 1970s in England and Germany which combined elements of early music with rock music. It grew out of the British folk rock and progressive folk movements of the later 1960s. Despite the name, the term was used indiscriminately to categorise performers who incorporated elements of medieval, renaissance and baroque music into their work and sometimes to describe groups who used few, or no, electric instruments. This subgenre reached its height towards the middle of the 1970s when it achieved some mainstream success in Britain, but within a few years most groups had either disbanded, or were absorbed into the wider movements of progressive folk and progressive rock. Nevertheless, the genre had a considerable impact within progressive rock where early music, and medievalism in general, was a major influence and through that in the development of heavy metal. More recently medieval folk rock has revived in popularity along with other forms of medieval inspired music such as Dark Wave orientated neo-Medieval music and medieval metal.
Parcel of Rogues is an album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span. It was their most successful album thus far, breaking into the Top 30.
