Christmas is Coming

Both a dedicated carol singer and an authority on the history of English music, Nicholas Temperley here offers a unique book of 37 carols dating from the fifteenth century to the present.

For over fifty years he has sung, edited and composed carols each Christmas, and in Christmas is Coming the fruit of his enthusiasm is combined with his wealth of knowledge to produce an outstanding and original new collection. As John Rutter observes in his Foreword, the book does not pointlessly duplicate what can be found in many other carol books, but has a personality and purpose of its own.

Nicholas Temperley is also author of The Music of the English Parish Church, co-editor with Sally Drage of the definitive Musica Britannica anthology of eighteenth-century psalmody and gallery music, and distinguished contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Born in Beaconsfield, England, he studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois.

Twenty-two fresh and practical arrangements include carols from Austria, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland and the USA, alongside music both rare and familiar from the rich heritage of the English carol tradition. As well as eight of his personal favourites, from J. S. Bach to Charles Ives, the author includes seven new compositions of his own, settings of medieval and traditional texts that reveal his skill as a choral composer whose command of style ranges from the humorous to the profound.

In addition to sample programmes and translations, there are invaluable notes on the performance and history of individual items, plus an historical summary of the genre as a whole: everything in fact to make Christmas is Coming an indispensable companion for singers who wish to enrich the seasonal repertoire for concerts, churches and traditional Yuletide carolling.