Sussex Carol (Concert Band with Optional Choir - Score and Parts) - Noble & Willcocks

The Sussex Carol is a Christmas carol popular in Britain, sometimes referred to by its first line On Christmas night all Christians sing. Its words were first published by Luke Wadding, a 17th-century Irish bishop, in a work called Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs (1684). It is unclear whether Wadding wrote the song or was recording an earlier composition. Both the text and the tune to which it is now sung were discovered and written down by Cecil Sharp in Buckland, Gloucestershire, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who heard it being sung by a Harriet Verrall of Monk's Gate, near Horsham, Sussex (hence Sussex Carol). The tune to which it is generally sung today is the one Vaughan Williams took down from Mrs. Verrall and published in 1919.

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