MASTERS IN THIS HALL
Watch The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra perform ‘Masters in This Hall’.
ABOUT 'MASTERS IN THIS HALL'
Music: French carol
Text: William Morris
Arrangement: Mack Wilberg
The melody for this lesser-known Christmas carol dates from the early 18th century, when it was first used a dance tune in the 1706 opera Alcyone by the French composer Marin Marais. The tune eventually found its way to England, and in 1860 was matched with new lyrics by a young apprentice designer and architect, William Morris, whose professional interests also included poetry and social activism. (In fact, Morris was better known during his lifetime as a poet than as a designer.)
Morris’s lyrics focus attention on the poor and the humble, who comprehend the true message of Christmas more readily than their wealthy masters. One of Morris’s associates at his architecture office, Edmund Sedding, published the carol with its borrowed tune later in 1860. Mack Wilberg’s spirited arrangement of “Masters in This Hall” was published in 2006.
LISTEN TO THE FULL SONG
LYRICS
Masters in this hall,
Hear ye news today
Brought from over sea,
And ever I you pray.
Going o’er the hills,
Through the milk-white snow,
Heard I ewes bleat
While the wind did blow.
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we cheer!
Holpen are all folk on Earth,
Born is God’s Son so dear.
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell sing we loud!
God today hath poor folk raised
And cast a-down the proud.
Shepherds many an one
Sat among the sheep,
No man spake more word
Than they had been asleep.
Quoth I, “Fellows mine,
Why this guise sit ye?
Making but dull cheer,
Shepherds though ye be?”
LYRICS CONT...
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we cheer!
Holpen are all folk on Earth,
Born is God’s Son so dear.
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell
Nowell, sing we loud!
God today hath poor folk raised
And cast a-down the proud.
Shepherds should of right
Leap and dance and sing,
Thus to see ye sit,
Is a right strange thing.
Quoth these fellows then,
“To Bethlehem we go,
To see a mighty Lord
Lie in manger low.”
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we cheer!
Holpen are all folk on Earth,
Born is God’s Son so dear.
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we loud!
God today hath poor folk raised
And cast a-down the proud.