"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.[1] Cecil
Alexander, meanwhile, married the Anglican clergyman William
Alexander in 1848 and
upon her husband's consecration became a bishop's wife in 1867.[1] She
is also remembered for her hymn All Things
Bright and Beautiful.
Since
1919, the Festival of Nine
Lessons and Carols at
the King's College
Chapel Cambridge has begun its Christmas Eve service, with Dr Arthur Henry Mann's arrangement of "Once
in Royal David's City" as the Processional hymn.[1] Mann
was organist at King's between 1876–1929.[2] In
his arrangement, the first verse is sung by a boy chorister of the Choir of King's
Chapel as a solo. The second verse is sung by the choir,
and the congregation joins in the third verse. Excluding
the first verse, the hymn is accompanied by the organ. This carol was the first recording that
the King's College
Choir under Boris Ord made
forEMI in 1948.[3] Among
others who have recorded it are Mary Chapin
Carpenter, The Chieftains, Daniel O'Donnell, The Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, Petula Clark, Jethro Tull, Sinéad O'Connor and Sufjan Stevens.
