The Music & Majesty Christmas CD is designed to help you celebrate the meaning and glory of Christmas. 10 beloved songs of the season are featured with rich, uplifting instrumental arrangements from the Our Daily Bread: The Best of Christmas CD. This Christmas CD is perfect for family get-togethers, church pre-services, and of course, for your personal times of prayer and reflection with the Lord.

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The carols on the CD are as follows. Click on the audio player of the individual tracks below to listen to them.

1. Angels We Have Heard On High / O Come, All Ye Faithful

Angels We Have Heard on High is a Christmas carol of French origin commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ. The words of the song are based on a traditional French carol known as Les Anges dans nos campagnes (literally, “Angels in our countryside”) composed by an unknown author in Languedoc, France. This carol has received many changes and adjustments including its most common English version that was translated in 1862 by James Chadwick, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, northeast England.

2. We Three Kings

We Three Kings, also known as We Three Kings of Orient Are or The Quest of the Magi, was written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr., in 1857, who was then the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in New York City. The context of the carol centres around the Biblical Magi, who visited Jesus during his Nativity and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh while paying homage to him. While the event was mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, there are no actual details given with regards to their names, the number of Magi present, or whether they were even royal. Hence, the names of the Magi (in the carol), and their status as kings from the Orient, are legendary and based on tradition. The notion of three kings stems from the fact that there were three separate gifts that were given.

3. O Come All Ye Faithful

O Come, All Ye Faithful (originally written in Latin as Adeste Fideles) is a Christmas carol which has been credited to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711–1786), John Reading (1645–1692) and King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656). The tune has been said to be written by several musicians, including John Reading and his son, to George Frideric Handel, Thomas Arne, and king John IV of Portugal.

4. He Is Born, the Divine Christ Child / Away in a Manger

Although the words and music of He Is Born, the Divine Christ Child is traditional French, the tune actually dates back to 13th century Poland where it was often sung by boys as they made their way toward church for midnight mass. In their processional to the church they would sing this song as they reenacted the arrival of the Maji. Although Away in a Manger is sometimes known as Luther’s Cradle Hymn, there is no basis for the legend that Martin Luther both composed and sang it to his children. The song originated in America in the mid 1800’s, and remains an anonymous carol considered a traditional, universal Christmas lullaby. The words have been set to several different melodies.

5. O Holy Night

Adolphe Adam (1803-1856) was a French composer of several stage and ballet productions. He took his melody to his close friend, the French poet Cappeau de Roquemaure who supplied the lyrics. They titled their collaboration Cantique de Noel. The English words we use today were written by an American clergyman and musical scholar, John Sullivan Dwight. Adam’s composition was initially met with criticism from French church officials who denounced it for its “lack of musical taste and total absence of the spirit of religion.” Of course it has gone on to become one of the most popular and deeply moving vocal solos in the repertoire of popular and sacred holiday music.

6. The Wexford Carol

The Wexford Carol is a traditional religious Irish Christmas carol, dating back to the 12th century. Although one of the oldest Christmas carols in the European tradition, it has been covered by many artists over the years, such as Julie Andrews in 1966, and Loreena McKennitt in 1987, and by Michael McDonald in 2009 as a duet with his wife Amy Holland, using only the first three of the traditional verses.

7. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

When American composer Richard Willis (1810-1876) composed this melody, adapted from an English tune, he referred to it as “Study no. 23”. Coincidentally, in the same year (1849), Edmund Sears (1810-1876), a minister in Wayland, Massachusetts, wrote words for a Christmas song reflecting upon that winter season and the sobering reality that the country was on the verge of civil war. With that background, the glorious song of “peace on earth, goodwill toward men” takes on added significance. Interestingly, Willis, a graduate of Yale, and Sears, a graduate of Harvard, possibly never even met. The words and music were joined together in 1850.

8. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring is the most common English title of the 10th and last movement of the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 (“Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life”), composed by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1716 and 1723. Written during his first year in Leipzig, Germany, this chorale movement is one of Bach’s most enduring works. Today, this piece is often performed at weddings and at Christmas and Easter, slowly and reverently. This is however, apparently in contrast to the effect suggested by Bach in his original scoring, for voices with trumpet, oboes, strings, and continuo.

9. O Come, O Come Emmanuel / Joy to the World (with Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus and Joy to the World)

The well-known English Christian hymn O come, O come, Emmanuel is in fact a translation of the original Latin, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, and translations into other modern languages (particularly German) are also in widespread use. The 1861 translation is by far, the most prominent in the English-speaking world, but other English translations also exist.

The great hymn writer, Isaac Watts (1674-1748) introduced the concept of paraphrasing the Bible into texts for hymns. In 1719, Joy to the World, based on Psalm 98:4, was included in a collection of Psalms of David that he had transformed into hymns and originally titled Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom. From a very young age, Isaac Watts sought to improve on the lifeless congregational singing in the church where his father was a deacon in Southampton, England. When his father challenged him to provide better hymns for them to sing, he did. The melody for Joy to the World came from American composer, Lowell Mason (1830) who apparently felt the need to credit Frederick Handel as the co-composer, possibly for musical phrases that Mason borrowed or simply out of respect for Handel’s influence.

10. Once in Royal David’s City / O Come All Ye Shepherds

Once in Royal David’s City is a Christmas carol originally written as poem by Cecil Frances Alexander. The carol was first published in 1848 in Miss Cecil Humphreys’ hymnbook Hymns for little Children. A year later, the English organist Henry John Gauntlett discovered the poem and set it to music. Cecil Alexander, married the Anglican clergyman William Alexander in 1848 and upon her husband’s consecration, became a bishop’s wife in 1867. She is also remembered for her hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful.