O Come All Ye Faithful

O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold him,
Born the King of Angels:
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

God of God,
Light of light,
Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.
Verily God,
Begotten, not created:
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation,
Sing, all ye citizens of Heaven above!
Glory to God,
Glory in the highest:
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

Yea, Lord, we greet thee,
Born this happy morning;
Jesus, to thee be glory given!
Word of the Father,
Now in flesh appearing!
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.

O Come All Ye Faithful is the last “window” in our advent calendar of carols, maybe in the same way it’s the last carol sung in the King’s College, Cambridge service of Nine Lessons and Carols, and it’s the last hymn to be sung in the Vatican’s Midnight Mass in St Peter’s Square on Christmas Eve. This isn’t because it’s number one in any chart, nor that it’s the best carol for some reason, but because it carries a joyous message. (Planning the series of carols wasn’t too difficult as they almost recommend themselves, but finding images to accompany and illustrate the posts has been a bit more problematic.)

It might be considered an “opposite” type of carol to Silent Night which had an easy, straightforward creation when two friends merged a poem and a melody from scratch in a couple of hours, and created an instant classic. In contrast O Come All Ye Faithful has origins that are messy and a history of different translations, multiple versions, and verses being added then taken away again; maybe it’s its essential simplicity that has ensured its survival rather than it becoming lost by the wayside like so many others.

The carol is sometimes called Adeste Fideles as it was originally written in Latin, but there’s no agreement on the source of the text which is believed to have been written in the 13th century; some claim that it was written by Cistercian monks but are unable to establish whether the Cistercian brothers in question were in Portugal, Spain or Germany; others suggest an Italian monk, St Bonaventure; King John IV of Portugal in the 17th century is another candidate; there are even claims on behalf of an Englishman, John Francis Wade (1711-1786).

What is known is that the earliest written versions of Adeste Fidelis in 1751 were published by John Francis Wade, but this is more likely because he’d transcribed the manuscripts from other documents rather than being original work. Wade was an English Catholic who evaded persecution after the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 and lived in Douai, northern France, teaching music and maintaining archives of music, so he had access to a wide range of material. The text we know today is an amalgamation of two translations from Wade’s transcription in Latin, by Frederick Oakeley and William Brooke, and published in Britain in 1852.

O Come All Ye Faithful has also been called The Portuguese Hymn after the Latin version was heard being sung at the Portuguese Embassy in London in 1795. The history of the carol narrated at that time by the Portuguese diplomatic staff was that it had been written by King John IV (1604-1656) of Portugal who had been a great patron of the arts and build a great library in Lisbon before it was destroyed in the earthquake of 1755; it was also claimed (of course?) that the melody had been written by King John IV as well.

The melody’s origins are as murky as the text with attribution possibilities to several composers. The tune that we associate with the carol today is a relatively recent version dating from 1961; the arrangement is by Sir David Willcocks, a choral conductor and organ scholar, and director of the choir of King’s College, Cambridge from 1957 to 1974.

Merry Christmas