"Masters in This Hall" (alternative title: "Nowell, Sing We Clear") is a Christmas carol with words written around 1860 by the English poet and artist William Morris to an old French dance tune. The carol is moderately popular around the world but has not entered the canon of most popular carols.
The French composer Marin Marais composed the tune as a dance for his opera Alcyone of 1706, with the title Marche pour les Matelots. [1] [2]
The tune was subsequently included in Raoul Auger Feuillet's 1706 Recueil de contredanse along with a longways proper dance, La Matelotte, which Feuillet had himself written to go with the tune. [3]
In 1710 John Essex (d. 1744) published an English translation of Feuillet's work called, For the Further Improvement of Dancing, in which the dance is given as The Female Saylor. [3]
The words were written around 1860 while William Morris, then 26, was working as an apprentice in the office of the architect, Edmund Street, presumably under the persuasion of his fellow students who at that time had a taste for part-song. [4]
The architect and musician Edmund Sedding had at one point also been in the office of G. E. Street and he had discovered the tune at a meeting with the organist at Chartres Cathedral. [5] It was included in Sedding's collection of Nine Antient and Goodly Carols for the Merry Tide of Christmas (1860). In 1884 the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne described this carol as "one of the co-equal three finest ... in the language." According to Swinburne, the carol was also included, at his suggestion, in the publisher Arthur Bullen's A Christmas Garland: Carols and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (1885). [6]
Gustav Holst incorporated the carol into his work Three Carols (1916–17) along with "Christmas Song: On this Day" and "I Saw Three Ships". Holst wrote the Three Carols for amateurs singing in his Thaxted festivals. The carols are all for unison choir with orchestral or organ accompaniment. [7]
"Masters in This Hall" is said to have a sixteenth-century feel, harking back to a simpler society, in line with Morris's own romanticism. [5] It also has elements of Morris's socialist beliefs, with the poor bringing news of Christ's birth to the "Masters in this Hall" and a warning to the proud. [8]
The image of raising up the poor and casting down the proud is also contained in the song of the Virgin Mary, often referred to as the Magnificat , sung upon the occasion of her visit to Saint Elizabeth, a relative of hers and the mother of John the Baptist, that is referenced in Luke 1:51 .
In Morris's original version there are twelve verses but today only four or five are sung. [3]
The carol describes a poor man, emphasised by his rural dialect, drawing his master's attention to the birth of Christ by describing how he had met shepherds travelling to Bethlehem in solemn mood where, joining them, he had seen the Christ child in his mother's arms. The chorus repeats how the birth of Christ has raised up the poor and cast down the proud. [3]
Masters in this Hall,
Hear ye news to-day
Brought from over sea,
And ever I you pray:
Chorus
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we clear!
Holpen are all folk on earth,
Born is God's son so dear:
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we loud!
God to-day hath poor folk raised
And cast a-down the proud. [9]— Stanza 1 & Chorus
A Christmas carol is a carol on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season. The term noel has sometimes been used, especially for carols of French origin. Christmas carols may be regarded as a subset of the broader category of Christmas music.
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with Christian church worship, and sometimes accompanied by a dance. A caroller is someone who sings carols, and is said to be carolling.
"The Holly and the Ivy" is a traditional British folk Christmas carol, listed as number 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song can be traced only as far as the early nineteenth century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas dating at least as far as medieval times. The lyrics and melody varied significantly in traditional communities, but the song has since become standardised. The version which is now popular was collected in 1909 by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England, from a woman named Mary Clayton.
"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 other variant incipits.
"Deck the Halls” is a traditional Christmas carol. The melody is Welsh, dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, "Nos Galan", while the English lyrics, written by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant, date to 1862.
"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is a Christmas carol based on the 1863 poem "Christmas Bells" by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The song tells of the narrator hearing Christmas bells during the American Civil War, but despairing that "hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men". After much anguish and despondency the carol concludes with the bells ringing out with resolution that "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep" and that there will ultimately be "peace on earth, good will to men".
The "Boar's Head Carol" is a macaronic 15th century English Christmas carol that describes serving a boar's head at a Yuletide feast. Of the several extant versions of the carol, the one most usually performed today is based on a version published in 1521 in Wynkyn de Worde's Christmasse Carolles. A modern choral arrangement by Elizabeth Poston (1960) is also widely performed.
"Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing-day" is an English carol usually attributed as "traditional"; its first written appearance is in William B. Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern of 1833. However, it is almost certainly of a much earlier date; Studwell (2006) places it in the 16th century. Cahill (2006) based on the phrase "to see the legend of my play" speculates that the text may be based on an earlier version associated with a mystery play of the late medieval period.
Hodie is a cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Composed between 1953 and 1954, it is the composer's last major choral-orchestral composition, and was premiered under his baton at Worcester Cathedral, as part of the Three Choirs Festival, on 8 September 1954. The piece is dedicated to Herbert Howells. The cantata, in 16 movements, is scored for chorus, boys' choir, organ and orchestra, and features tenor, baritone, and soprano soloists.
"I syng of a mayden" is a Middle English lyric poem or carol of the 15th century celebrating the Annunciation and the Virgin Birth of Jesus. It has been described as one of the most admired short vernacular English poems of the late Middle Ages.
Anthony Grant Barrand was a British-born American folk singer and academic. He was a Professor of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University, where his courses included "Stalking the Wild Mind: The Psychology and Folklore of Extra-Sensory Perception and Psychic Phenomena", "English Ritual Dance and Drama", and "Folk Songs as Social History".
Nowell Sing We Clear is a previously four-member musical group that performs an annual yuletide concert series. They have also released a series of related albums.
Christmas (1861–1865) was celebrated in the Confederate States of America, but frowned upon and actually fined in Massachusetts. It was seen as an unnecessary expense. It was thought to be a day of fasting by the Puritans and Lutherans. The day did not become an official holiday until five years after the war ended. The war continued to rage on Christmas and skirmishes occurred throughout the countryside. Celebrations for both troops and civilians saw significant alteration. Propagandists, such as Thomas Nast, used wartime Christmases to reflect their beliefs. In 1870, Christmas became an official Federal holiday when President Ulysses S. Grant made it so in an attempt to unite north and south.
"As with Gladness Men of Old" is an Epiphany hymn, written by William Chatterton Dix on 6 January 1859 (Epiphany) while he was ill in bed. Though considered by many as a Christmas carol, it is found in the Epiphany section of many hymnals and still used by many churches. The music was adapted by William Henry Monk in 1861 from a tune written by Conrad Kocher in 1838. The hymn is based on the visit of the Biblical magi in the Nativity of Jesus.
"Love Came Down at Christmas" is a Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti. It was first published without a title in Time Flies: A Reading Diary in 1885. It was later included in the collection Verses in 1893 under the title "Christmastide".
Henry Ramsden Bramley was an English clergyman and hymnologist perhaps best known for his collaborations with the composer Sir John Stainer. Along with earlier 19th-century composers such as William Sandys and John Mason Neale, Bramley and Stainer are credited with fuelling a Victorian revival of Christmas carols with their 1871 publication of Christmas Carols, New and Old, which popularised carols such as "The First Nowell", "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "The Holly and the Ivy".
"The Rocking Carol", also known as "Little Jesus, Sweetly Sleep" and "Rocking", is an English Christmas carol by Percy Dearmer. It was translated from Czech in 1928 and is performed as a lullaby to the baby Jesus. The carol has also been known in English as the "Rocking" carol since an American edition in 1963. The carol has been recorded by Julie Andrews, Roger Whittaker and other artists.
Nowell Sing We may refer to:
"This Have I Done for My True Love", or "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day", Op. 34, no. 1 [H128], is a motet or part song composed in 1916 by Gustav Holst. The words are taken from an ancient carol, and the music is so strongly influenced by English folk music that it has sometimes been mistaken for a traditional folk song itself. It has often been described as a small masterpiece.