While Shepherds Watched

On behalf of the entire Hymnary. While shepherds watched their flocks. While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground Author: Edith Sanford Tillotson ; Author: Choral While Shepherds Watched. Representative Text 1 While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, an angel of the Lord came down, and glory shone around.

Nahum Tate versified it in and included a few extra details to accentuate some of the facts. FlexScores are available in the Media section below. You have access to this FlexScore. Text size Text size:.

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Nahum Tate, Meter: Christmas ; Jesus Christ Birth. An American Christmas Harp While shepherds watched their flocks by night Tune Title: Nahum Tate Meter: While shepherds watch'd their flocks by night Tune Title: New Bethlehem First Line: Shining Star First Line: Ancient and Modern 89a. While shepherds watched their flocks by night First Line: Ancient and Modern 89b. Anglican Hymns Old and New Rev. While shepherds watched their flocks First Line: While shepherds watched their flocks Tune Title: Baptist Hymnal Jesus, Birth ; Jesus, Savior. Celebrating Grace Hymnal Christmas ; Jesus Christ ; Jesus Christ: Church Family Worship While shepherds watched their flocks by night Meter: Church Hymnal, Fifth Edition While shepherds watched their flocks by night Date: Common Praise Christmas ; Chirstimas Midnight.

Complete Anglican Hymns Old and New While shepherds watched First Line: Complete Mission Praise Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary Nativity of our Lord. Glory to God CM with repeat Scripture: Nahym Tate, Meter: A Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms, Hymns and Psalms a. Hymns and Psalms b. Hymns for a Pilgrim People CM with Repeat Scripture: The vocal group Psalmody was formed especially for this recording and consists of professional singers, teachers and students drawn mainly from the Colchester area.

Most of them come from the enormous forgotten repertory used in English parish churches between about and But not all parish choirs sang in galleries, not all the composers were provincial or rural, and not all of it comes from the Church of England; there is a related but distinctive repertory of Nonconformist music. This recording is a wide-ranging survey of Christmas music from these traditions, roughly in chronological order and ranging from the earliest rural psalmody to sophisticated pieces in the parish church idiom by London composers, and to extended and elaborate Christmas anthems by provincial composers.

The congregational singing of metrical psalms in parish churches had become so apathetic and unrhythmical by the late seventeenth century that amateur choirs were formed to improve standards and revitalize worship. This produced unforeseen results, for the choirs eventually silenced the congregations they had been originally formed to support. As they grew more competent they became more ambitious, and began to perform polyphonic psalm settings and anthems that were too complex to allow the participation of ordinary parishioners.

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Much of this new repertoire was collected or composed by itinerant country singing teachers, such as Michael Beesly of Blewbury in Oxfordshire. When Beesly was active rural choirs normally sang unaccompanied. Organs were installed in many urban parish churches in the course of the eighteenth century, though only about ten per cent of country churches had an organ by Clark often provided his pieces with thematically related symphonies, so we have devised one in his style for Cranbrook—with apologies to Handel!

In particular, psalmody composers continued to place the tune in the tenor rather than the soprano, but expected it to be doubled at the octave by women or boys, producing rich five-part harmony. Nonconformist composers usually wrote in three parts rather than four, but expected both the upper ones to be doubled at the octave, so five parts were produced from three. Anglican and Nonconformist musicians continually borrowed and adapted music in this way, usually without acknowledging their sources. One of the most remarkable publications in this field was Harmonia Sacra, published in by the little-known Thomas Butts, an associate of the Wesleys.

Its title may have been intended to recall the Harmonia Sacra collections published by Henry Playford in and , and like them it brings together secular devotional songs and pieces borrowed from the chapel repertory. Some Christmas pieces were adapted for private devotion or solo performance. There are other pieces by him in the collection, and he had been an associate of the Wesleys towards the end of his life.

The exact date of Tate's composition is not known, but the words appeared in Tate and Nicholas Brady 's supplement to their New Version of the Psalms of David of It was the only Christmas hymn authorised to be sung by the Anglican Church ; before only the Psalms of David were permitted to be sung.

It is written in common metre and based on the Gospel of Luke 2: It is the only one of the sixteen works in the supplement to still be sung today. George Kirbye , an East Anglian madrigalist about whom little is known, was employed by Este to arrange some of tunes featured in his The Whole Book of Psalmes and it is his arrangement of Tye's work that appears in the psalter to accompany Psalm 84 "How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place" with the melody in the tenor.

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Professor Jeremy Dibble of Durham University has noted that "While Shepherds Watched" was "the only Christmas hymn to be approved by the Church of England in the 18th century and this allowed it to be disseminated across the country with the Book of Common Prayer. David Weyman's adaptation of "Christmas", taken from an aria in the opera Siroe by George Frideric Handel was arranged by Lowell Mason in , and it is now this version which is most commonly used in the United States.

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American composer Daniel Read published his tune "Sherburne" in , a popular setting that appeared over seventy times in print before and is still commonly sung by Sacred Harp singers. It was set to music in in Harmonia Sacra. The hymn tune " Cranbrook " was written in by Canterbury shoe-maker Thomas Clark and named after the local village of Cranbrook.