What sweeter music: an examination of the development and popularity of carol services in cathedrals

ABSTRACT

Carol services have always been among the most popular of cathedral offerings, including with those who have little or no regular church affiliation. Their high-quality music may make them attractive to the growing numbers of ‘spiritual but not religious’, in similar ways to choral evensong; the fact that they also tell the story of human salvation through the incarnation creates an opportunity for mission which is often underestimated. The success of carol services might even stimulate questions as to whether nostalgia and tradition, paradoxically, act as drivers for mission in cathedrals. A rethinking of Benedictine identity is key to many cathedrals’ exploration of their place in a post-Covid world of rapid change: the popularity of ‘traditional’ services in a cathedral setting is one indicator of how the search for Benedictine stabilitas might become a positive rather than a backwards-looking movement in a time of uncertainty.

KEYWORDS:

• Carol services
• cathedral studies
• mission
• music

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1. King’s College archives (KCAR/8/3/21/13).

2. Audience Research Report for the BBC on 1966 service (KCAR 8/3/21/13-).

3. Jeremy Summerly, The Story of Nine Lessons and Carols DVD (2015).

4. Chris Gray comments that he is ‘grateful to King’s’ for this innovation, which they and most other choirs have happily adopted.

5. Andrew Nethsingha, Director of Music at Truro 1994–2002, in ‘Truro Perspectives’ from Story of Nine Lessons and Carols DVD.

6. The Flight (OUP X612, 2015).

7. The sleeve note to King’s On Christmas Day CD makes the distinction between Christmas as ‘holyday’ and the secular ‘holiday’ associated with the winter solstice.

8. Between 2017–2019 the average attendance at services in England’s cathedrals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was just under 140k, compared to an average Sunday attendance of around 15k. In 2021, with most Covid restrictions formally lifted but anxiety still high, numbers attending Christmas services had recovered to around half this number. This reflects a more general pattern in post-Covid attendance at cathedrals across various types of service (p. 12).

9. www.choralevensong.org.uk accessed 24/1/23.

10. Premier Christian News, 15 December 2017, accessed online 3/3/23: the survey referred to was conducted by the genealogy firm AncestryDNA.

11. Premier’s prediction was focused on attendance at parish churches rather than cathedrals: Cathedral Statistics 2021 indicates that attendance at Christmas services in cathedrals actually went up in 2017, reaching a high in 2019.

12. Presentation to the Precentors’ Conference, 10/1/23.

13. Coghlan (2016, 10), quotes the Victorian carol-collector W.W. Fyfe as saying that carols are ‘a song intended to mingle joy and wonder’.

14. cf. Peter Holman, While shepherds watched: Christmas music from English parish churches and chapels, 1740–1830 (Hyperion, 2008), which includes several different versions of this carol.

15. Milner-White, KCA, Cambridge.coll/21/1 (1952), 2.

16. Cleobury (1988, p. 687), quotes Milner-White’s view that ‘the scriptures, not the carols, are the backbone’.

17. A sample order is reproduced in Hoppin (1978, 100, table 7).

18. King’s Archive CSV 103 contains a complete set of orders of service from 1919 onwards, with a photocopy of the order from 1918.

19. Nash (2014), 337. Other changes to the readings are detailed by Nash (2014, 339).

20. West Briton Gazette, December 1880.

21. KCAR/8/3/21/13: letter responding to the 1990 service.

22. See for example Doll, ‘What cathedrals can learn from St Benedict’, Church Times 31/3/23.

23. The Cathedral Music Trust evolved from the Friends of Cathedral Music during the pandemic in order to provide more focused professional support for cathedral and parish music.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Rowan Clare Williams

Rowan Clare Williams is an Anglican priest, currently serving as Canon Precentor at Peterborough Cathedral. She has previously worked in hospital and university chaplaincy. She holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge in the theology of St Clare of Assisi, and a Masters in English Church Music focusing on the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge. Her publications include articles and monographs on the theology of chaplaincy and on Franciscan spirituality, both contemporary and historical.