Go Tell It On the Mountain—The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-‘25

    

                                                            Go Tell it on the Mountain by the Sing Out Gospel Choir from the ABC TV Motown Christmas Special.

Note--The second of a Christmas Day Three-fer.

Of all the announcement carols Go Tell It On the Mountain is unusual for a number of reasons. It is not European but rooted in the American Black Community and dated to the era when the end of slavery was celebrated. It is not an announcement by the Heavenly Hosts, but an instruction to a whole people to spread the good word. And because of its connections to the Civil Rights Movement, it doubles as a Christmas Carol and a liberation anthem. 

 It has been dated to 1865 and may reflect the widely celebrated moment when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery went into effect or even earlier to the Watch Night celebrations on New Year’s Eve 1863 when Lincoln’s war-time Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. 

An announcement for Watch Night when African-Americans gathered on New Year's Eve to greet the news of the Emancipation Proclamation.   Many Black churches continue to hold Watch Night services where Go Tell It On the Mountain is commonly sung.

 

Like earlier spirituals from the slavery era it couched liberation in Biblical analogy. The song spread through ante-bellum Black Churches and was widely popularized by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers who toured widely from the 1870’s. 

Civil Rights dynamo and song leader Fannie Lou Hamer may have been the first, or one of the first, to change he lyrics to "Let My People Go!"

During the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s activist/singer Fannie Lou Hamer and perhaps others borrowed the line “Let my people go!” from the older spiritual Go Down Moses to substitute from the original line “That Jesus Christ is Born!” Drawing on that inspiration Peter, Paul & Mary, who were active in Southern Civil Rights protests, recorded the song with the Exodus references in 1963 and it became a mid-level single hit for them in 1964.  

 

Today, Go Tell It On the Mountain is widely sung as a Christmas Carol in both Black and White churches and has been often recorded on holiday albums. It is particularly popular with County Music artists including Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, and even Toby Keith. On the other hand, the “Let My People” go versions remain popular with Black performers. People who first hear one or the other are sometimes surprised or shocked to discover the different use. In many Black churches, however, both versions are combined, especially on Watch Night. 

The Sing Out Gospel Choir

 

Today we’ll enjoy a version with the Sing Out Gospel Choir from the Motown Christmas Gospel Concert. 

 

 

Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful)—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-26

                                                     Luciano Pavarotti singing Adeste Fideles in 1978.

Note—We need another for Christmas Eve.  After the brief serenity for Mary, Joseph, and the infant comes the noisy hullabaloo of the Announcement carols. 

Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) is one of the most exuberant of announcement carols and is a perennial favorite for both choir performance and congregational singing at Christmas Eve services.  It is based on two Old Testament verses said to foretell the coming of the Messiah—Psalm 98, 96:11-12 and Genesis 3:17-18 but like other popular carols it is sung as if it is an announcement of the birth of Christ by Angels on high. 

Mystery surrounds the creation of Adeste Fideles in Latin for use in the Catholic mass.  Proposed authors include St. Bonaventure—highly unlikely—the English Catholic and Jacobite John Francis Wade, anonymous Cistercian monks, and even a reining European monarch, King John IV (João IV) of Portugal. 

A mid-centurish Christmas card.  Most illustrations for the song show manger scenes and adoration, but the song is an announcement and a call.

Wade signed the oldest printed version of the Latin text printed while he was in exile in France in 1751.  It was included in a volume of reproductions of his manuscript copies, Cantus Diversi pro Dominicis et Festis per annum (Dominican songs and festivals of the year.)  The text was also said to have hidden messages recognizable to the covert supporters of the Stewart pretender after the Jacobite rebellion was crushed.  Those coded messages are obscure and doubtful, however, and it is most likely that Wade’s signature attests to his skilled calligraphy and is not a claim to authorship. 

The version published by Wade consisted of four Latin verses. But later in the 18th Century, the French Catholic priest Jean-François-Étienne Borderies wrote an additional three verses in Latin now normally printed sung as the third to fifth of seven verses. 

King John (João IV) IV was known as the "Restorer of Portugal" for reclaiming the country's independence from Spain and re-establishing the Portuguese monarchy.  A staunch ally of England against Spain, he also ruled over the country during the period of its greatest extent as a world-wide empire.  Could he have also authored Adeste Fideles?

The connection to King John—or the members of the Portuguese Province of the Cistercians—is stronger.  It is bolstered by a claim by the Duke of Leeds that he first heard it sung at the Portuguese embassy in London in 1795.  The carol was soon popularly known as The Portuguese Song.  King John had musical interests and was the acknowledged writer/composer of Church music including the Lentin hymn Crux Fidelis.  The King’s massive library said to contain the original manuscripts to Adeste Fideles was destroyed by the Lisbon earthquake and fire of 1775, but other copies were preserved and found at his former Ducal Vila Viçosa palace and have been dated to 1741, well before Wade’s publication. 

The first English words are by Isaac Watts a dissenting clergyman and prolific hymnist published in 1719 in Watts’ collection The Psalms of David: Imitated in the language of the New Testament, and applied to the Christian state and worship with a notation that the music was taken from “Tunes of the Old Psalmbook.”  Also indicating that the Latin version was known well before Wade. By the late 18th Century, the lyrics had been printed with music several times. 

                            If Adeste Fideles in Latin was firmly Catholic, a polar opposite--English Dissenter Isaac Watts--made the first English version.

Despite its Catholic and Papish origin and official scorn for its disreputable dissenter source in English, the carol was so popular that it was soon included in orthodox Anglican services. 

The version most commonly sung today is from Lowell Mason’s 1848 The National Psalmist published in Boston with a tune he named Antioch and attributed as “arranged from Handel.”  It was not in fact arranged by Handel, but Mason borrowed the first four notes from the chorus Lift Up Your Heads from The Messiah.  Modern scholars have identified other possible sources including Charles Wesley’s O Joyful Sound published in 1833. 

Due to its popularity as a choral piece, O Come All Ye Faithful is the most published Christmas hymn in North America.  In addition to innumerable choir performances, it has also notably been recorded by Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Andy Williams, The Supremes, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, Pat Boone, Nat King Cole, Vic Damone, Mariah Carey, Whitney Huston with a gospel choir in the movie The Preacher’s Wife, and by the a cappella group Pentatonix. 

Pavarotti's Montreal concert was broadcast live on ABC-TV and was considered one of the big events of the 1978 season.

Today we enjoy a classic version by Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti at Notre Dame Cathedral in Montréal, Canada joined by a boys choir, Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, and an adult choir, Les Disciples de Massenet in a 1978 television broadcast.