1. LET ALL MORTAL FLESH KEEP SILENCE

"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is a chant of Eucharistic adoration, persisting from the Apostolic Age. Originally in Greek, the hymn was used in the Divine Liturgy of St. James, which was a standard form of Christian liturgy in the Byzantine and Syriac Rites as early as the 4th century CE. It owes its use in the English-speaking church to its translator, Gerard Moultrie (1829–1885). In English, it was first published in the hymnal Lyra Eucharistica in 1864 with a 17th century French tune titled Picardy. Picardy remains the most prevalent tune setting of the English text, and is the one heard in this recording.

2. COMFORT, COMFORT, O MY PEOPLE

"Comfort Comfort O My People" comes to the English language by way of translator Catherine Winkworth (1827–1878). The hymn is a metrical paraphrase of the first verses of Isaiah 40, which appear in the Lectionary for the Second Sunday in Advent. The title of the accompanying tune, Geneva 42, refers to its origin as the melody for the 42nd Psalm in the Genevan Psalter, first published in 1551 by composer Claude Goudimel (1514–1572). The tune employs a unique rhythm which closely imitates the rhythm of the original text, alternating between a compound duple and simple triple subdivision, giving the impression of an earlier motet. In this recording, the second of the four original stanzas has been omitted.

3. SHEPHERDS REJOICE

"Shepherds Rejoice" is a poem written by hymnist Isaac Watts (1674–1748). Watts was a prolific poet and hymnist but not a composer, and therefore his works were often paired with various tunes by various composers in the years after first publication. "Shepherds Rejoice" is not an exception, and most musical arrangements feature different hymn tunes. The one sung in this recording is Kingsfold, a folk melody which has been used in England and Ireland for centuries. In secular music, the tune is recognizable as the Irish ballad "Star of the County Down".

4. PERSONENT HODIE

In the Middle Ages, Prague was a major hub for Christian music and philosophy in northern Europe. Clergy, composers, liturgists, and other Christian scholars would study in Prague before returning to their native lands of modern-day Sweden, Finland, Germany, among others. The earliest appearance of "Personent Hodie" is in the 1582 hymnal Piae Cantiones Ecclesiasticae et Scholasticae Veterum Episcoporum, compiled by Jaakko Suomalainen (1540–1588), a Lutheran cleric who would have been exposed to the religious music of Prague. Piae Cantiones contained 74 Latin texts, and remained a popular collection in Finland and Sweden until the 19th century. In the 1850s, a copy of the book was delivered to the English priest John Mason Neale (1818–1866), whose translations and new texts helped to popularize the hymns in the English-speaking world.

5. HURON CAROL

Saint Jean de Brébeuf (1593–1649) was a French Jesuit missionary in New France. Brébeuf made many expeditions into the French frontier in an effort to baptize the indigenous peoples, and converted many in the Huron and Wyandot cultures. His experience left him fluent in the Huron language, and he taught it to his fellow French missionaries living in Québec. He is credited with writing "Jesous Ahatonhia" in 1642 using a French folk tune (Une Jeune Pucelle) and words in the native Huron. The chosen tune had a limited range which was well-suited to Native American instruments. English translations are most commonly titled "'Twas in the Moon of Wintertime", or simply "Huron Carol". Brébeuf was martyred in 1649 after a sustained conflict with the neighboring Iroquois.

6. PEOPLE LOOK EAST

"People Look East" was written by Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965). Farjeon was best known as a children's author, but published several hymns in her lifetime. "People Look East" was first published in the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols as "Carol of the Advent". The Oxford Book of Carols was a unique effort by composers and hymnists Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), Percy Dearmer (1867–1936), and Martin Shaw (1875–1958) to compile tunes and texts of the English folk tradition, as well as proliferate new religious music with the character of English folk music. The book was a reaction to the stark (and, as Vaughan Williams said, "Germanic") character of Victorian hymns which populated the English church at the time. The collection contains carols for all seasons, not just Advent and Christmas—though even by 1928, the winter holidays were most popular for carol-singing. The tune used for "People Look East" is a 17th century French melody named Besançon, which was previously used for the carol "Shepherd, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep". Like most contemporary arrangements of this text, the third verse has been omitted.

7. GABRIEL'S MESSAGE

"Gabriel's Message" (Basque: Birjina gaztetto bat zegoen) is a carol of the Annunciation, based on the message delivered to Mary in Luke 1. The text is based on a 13th century poem titled Angelus Ad Virginem, which was likely written by a French Franciscan brother. A version of the text was translated into English at that time, but remained distinct from the Basque version of the carol, which was not published in English until 1892. The original poem is said to have 27 stanzas, but only a few are still commonly sung. The tune also comes from the Basque region of Iberia—at the time of its composition, a part of the Kingdom of Navarre.

8. ON JORDAN'S BANK

First published in Latin in 1736, "On Jordan's Bank" was translated into English in 1837 for erroneous inclusion in a hymnal titled Hymns of the Primitive Church, as its translator, John Chandler (1806–1876), believed it to be a medieval work. Its verses describe John the Baptist echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah, found in all four canonical Gospels. The text is most commonly paired with the melody Winchester New, which, despite its name, originated in Germany in 1690. The tune underwent generations of reharmonization and alterations before its publication under its current name in the English hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861.

9. THE KING SHALL COME WHEN MORNING DAWNS

Most popular Advent hymns are sung with Christmas—that is, the first coming of Christ—in mind. Liturgically speaking, the season of Advent also invites the faithful to prepare for Christ's second coming. "The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns" is one such hymn which looks forward rather than backward. It is possibly the most well-traveled of any hymn or carol on this record. It is thought to be a translation from Greek, that its use in the Orthodox church led it to Russia, and that it was then translated into English by John Brownlie (1857–1925). Another theory suggests that Brownlie used imagery from Orthodox theology to compose an entirely new hymn while claiming a Greek origin. The tune, Morning Song (originally Consolation), was first published in the United States by John Wyeth (1770–1858) in 1813, though given publishing practices in the USA in the 19th century it is unlikely he composed it. Wyeth is known to have no musical training or experience outside of an affinity for church music, and largely compiled existing music for use in contemporary worship. His books were printed in the four-shape shaped note tradition which became synonymous with hymnals like the Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony. The verses here are reordered from the original publication, and two have been omitted.

10. I WONDER AS I WANDER

"I Wonder as I Wander" was composed by John Jacob Niles (1892–1980), an American folklorist. Niles wrote most of the text and pieces of the melody around a fragment he had heard from a young girl in North Carolina. Its first publication came in 1934's Songs of the Hill Folk. Itwas believed by many to be an anonymous traditional carol long after its publication, which led to many copyright and royalty disputes on Niles's behalf.

11. THY STRONG WORD

"Thy Strong Word Did Cleave the Darkness" is a more contemporary text relative to the others here, having been written in 1969 by Martin Franzmann (1907–1976). Its tune is Welsh, titled Ebenezer, and comes from composer Thomas John Williams's (1869–1944) anthem titled "Goleu Yn Y Gly" (English: "Light in the Valley").

12. WATTS CRADLE SONG

Isaac Watts's (1674–1748) "Cradle Hymn" or "Cradle Song" was first included in his 1706 publication Moral Songs. Most renditions of the song (including this one) leave a few stanzas behind as unnecessarily dark, or downright anti-Semitic. As mentioned above, Watts published his works without musical accompaniment, to be set to tunes later by various composers. Such was the case for "Cradle Song", which was performed with many different tunes in the centuries following its publication. According to the editor's note in the New Oxford Book of Carols, Watts's "Cradle Song" languished in virtual disuse for these years for lack of a suitable melody, until its union with the Sacred Harp tune Restoration in 1970. Restoration remains the most common musical setting of the text, though it is not the one heard in this recording. In arranging the texts and tunes for this record, I found Restoration to be a brooding melody which betrayed the soothing tone of the poem. For this reason, the words are paired with Nettleton, another Sacred Harp tune. Both Restoration and Nettleton are best known as musical settings for another hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.