Christmas Carols: A Musical History

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season, it is thought that carols existed to keep up people’s spirits, along with dances, plays and feasts since before the fourteenth century. Whether religious or not, the singing of Christmas carols is a tradition enjoyed by many every year, but do we know why?

Author of ‘Christmas Carols: From Village Green to Church Choir,’ composer and choirmaster Andrew Gant joins Dan for this carol-filled episode of the podcast. Andrew and Dan discuss why we sing Christmas carols and how they came to hold the magic enjoyed by so many. Accompany Dan and Andrew in the festive spirit as delve into the history of one of our best-loved musical traditions and the surprising stories behind a handful of well-known seasonal songs.

Audio courtesy of Signum Records

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello,
0:00.5	folks, Dan Snow here.
0:01.6	I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit.
0:06.1	I'd love for you to be there.
0:07.5	Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London,
0:10.4	in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years.
0:14.1	You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes.
0:17.6	Look forward to seeing you there.
0:24.4	Hello folks. Welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Christmas week. We're talking about Christmas
0:29.5	carols. Those Christmasy songs that we still love singing, even if like me, you don't really
0:34.3	believe in the words you're actually singing, but they are wonderful,
0:38.5	nonetheless. There comes a time in every festive season when we turn off some of the popular
0:44.1	music and we put the carols on. In our family, that's when Christmas goes up a gear. When you hear
0:48.5	the Christmas carols wafting through the house, it means that you've put aside work for the year. It's time to
0:55.0	double down on family and getting the food going. That's the tradition in my family. It's a calming
1:00.5	presence in us. It's a centering of the Christmas spirit. I love it. And now in this episode,
1:06.0	we're going to be talking all about the history of Christmas carols. We're talking to Andrew Gant.
1:09.9	He was organist, choir master,
1:11.4	and composer, her majesty's chapel royal, for more than a decade from 2013. He's a composer,
1:18.5	and he's written several books on musical subjects. We're going to open this episode with his
1:23.5	arrangement of 12 days of Christmas. One of my favorites. We used to sing this. My mum and dad used to talk about as a carol party in our neighbour. People around neighbours used to come by. And the highlight was always 12 days of Christmas. It's very, very special indeed. Before you listen to it, don't forget, you can go to History Hit TV. The link is in the information where you got this podcast. Peace over there. It's all kicking off on history at TV next year.
1:44.6	You're going to love it.
	...

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