Part of many people’s family Christmas tradition is the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, which, since 1982, has been directed by Sir Stephen Cleobury, who died on November 22 at the age of 70. He had only retired from his post in September of this year and I am sure there will be an added poignancy to this year’s service as he is remembered by all who have watched him conducting the choir in past years.

Cleobury was himself a chorister at Worcester Cathedral before becoming an organ scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge. He went on to be head of music at Northampton Grammar School, then sub-organist at Westminster Abbey. He was the first Anglican to be Master of Music at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral for three years before his appointment as Director of Music at King’s.

King’s College has a long tradition of choral music. The college was founded by Henry VI in 1441. The king established a choir to sing daily services in the college chapel and specified that they were to be “poor boys, of strong constitution and of honest conversation” (www.kings.cam.ac.uk). Their duties included waiting on tables in hall. They were provided with meals and clothing and were paid eight pence a week, which was probably quite a reasonable rate in the mid-fifteenth century. The choir has been singing ever since, apart from during the years of Cromwell’s Commonwealth in the 1650's when choral singing in church was forbidden.

Orlando Gibbons was a King’s chorister en route to becoming one of the most significant English composers of the early 17th century. Charles Darwin used to hire the choristers to sing in his rooms at Christ’s College because he so enjoyed their music.

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was devised by Dean Eric Milner-White in 1918. It was broadcast on Christmas Eve for the first time in 1928, thus beginning the tradition with which we are familiar today. Cleobury’s great innovation was to include contemporary music as well as the Victorian favourites and the less well-known medieval and Tudor carols. He commissioned a new carol to be included in each year’s service. Not all of them went down well either with the public or with critics. I can remember my mother walking out of the room in disgust when the modern carol came on. Composers of the new commissioned carols have included Judith Weir, John Rutter and Arvo Pärt. This year’s carol has been composed by Dr Philip Moore, President of the Royal College of Organists and a former organist at Guildford Cathedral and York Minster. His “The Angel Gabriel” will be heard in public for the first time on Christmas Eve. The words will be familiar to many, but they have been given a new musical setting. The service this year will be the first to be directed by the new Director of Music, Daniel Hyde. He has a tough act to follow.

When I was training for ministry in Cambridge in the 1990's I used to go to a midweek Evensong at King’s about once a term to soak up the atmosphere and listen to the choir. The timing was always tricky as it meant rushing back to my own college to arrive late for the evening meal, hoping there would still be something edible left. I had first been introduced to church choral music through singing from the age of seven in the choir of the parish church where I grew up, St George’s, Glascote in Staffordshire. We weren’t very good and we weren’t very many, but we sang for two services every Sunday and our own Nine Lessons and Carols at Christmas, which is where I learnt many of the carols that are not often sung by congregations. Our choirmaster was a kind, elderly gentleman who, sadly, died before I was old enough for him to carry out his promise of teaching me to play the organ. If he had lived longer, perhaps I would have ended up as the organist instead of the rector.

“It’s your busy time of year,” people say to me all through December. There are some clergy who really don’t like Christmas and it must be quite a tough few weeks for them. But I love it. I love the carols, the mince pies, the scent of pine needles, the candlelight and the joy of celebrating Midnight Mass. I love being together with my church family and my own family. Our celebration of Christmas at home is always pretty simple. I don’t have hours to spend in the kitchen but there is always something to eat. We don’t go over the top on presents. There is usually a lot of laughter. My Christmas Eve won’t include the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s – I will be in church myself at that time – but there is always the iPlayer or BBC Sounds.

However you spend this Christmas, I hope there will be warmth and love, the company of family or dear friends, a sense of peace and hope and a traditional carol or two.

Reverend Anne-Marie Renshaw