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Various legends, registering differing degrees of reality and truth, inevitably surround such a famous and long-lived composition as Messiah by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). It is known that he wrote most of the work in an astonishingly short three weeks time, beginning on August 22, 1741. Another legend attached to the work relates to his inspiration, which casts the frenzied composition as a sort of divine dictation. Handel is said to have emerged at some point (usually, it is noted, after finishing the “Hallelujah Chorus”,) and proclaimed: “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself!” The first performance of Messiah took place in Dublin, on April 13, 1742. Handel gave the London premiere less than a year later at Covent Garden, and in the almost 300 years since then, Messiah has taken its rightful place as one of the most frequently performed and most beloved choral works of all time.

Stephen Cleobury (1948-2019) was an English organist and choirmaster. He received his early music education at Worcester Cathedral, and was later as organ scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge. Active as a conductor and organist in the UK and abroad, he often visited North America, Australia and Europe in these roles. He was also a frequent broadcaster for the BCC and appeared numerous times as an organ soloist at “The Proms”. However, he is perhaps best known as being the Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, from 1982-2019.

Charles Wood (1866-1926) was an Irish composer, organist and teacher; his pupils included Ralph Vaughan Williams at Cambridge, and Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music in London. One of the more important minor composers from the British Isles of his generation, he composed songs, cantatas, works for the stage, as well as orchestral and chamber pieces, but is best remembered for his large output of anthems, communion service settings, psalm settings, and other religious compositions.

George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934) was an English Anglican priest who wrote mostly religious verse, both original and translated from ancient authors. The best known of these were written to fit traditional melodies, mainly from the Renaissance era. He sometimes harmonized these melodies himself, but usually left it to his frequent collaborator, composer Charles Wood. In 1924, Wood and Woodward published A Cambridge Carol Book: Being Fifty-two Songs for Christmas, Easter and Other Seasons, which included this morning’s anthem “Ding Dong! Merrily on High”.

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed many other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. There were professional musicians in the previous three generations of Holst’s family and it was clear from an early age that he would follow the same calling. He had hoped to become a pianist but was prevented by neuritis in his right arm. Despite his father’s reservations, he pursued a career as a composer, studying at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Unable to support himself by his compositions, he played the trombone professionally and later became a teacher—a great one, according to his colleague Ralph Vaughan Williams. Among other teaching activities, he built up a strong tradition of performance at Morley College, where he served as musical director from 1907 until 1924 and pioneered music education for women at St Paul’s Girls’ School, where he taught from 1905 until his death. Holst’s works were played frequently in the early years of the 20th century, but it was not until the international success of The Planets in the years immediately after the First World War that he became a well-known figure. A shy man, he did not welcome this fame and preferred to be left in peace to compose and teach. In his later years, his uncompromising, personal style of composition struck many music lovers as too austere, and his brief popularity declined. Nevertheless, he was a considerable influence on a number of younger English composers, including Benjamin Britten.

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was born in London, the youngest child in an extraordinarily gifted family. Her father was the Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti, and her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti also became a poet and a painter. Rossetti’s first poems were written in 1842 and printed in her grandfather’s private press. In 1850, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal “The Germ”, which had been founded by her brother William Michael and his friends. Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics, and her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. Her collection of poetry called “Goblin Market and Other Poems” was published in 1862, and it established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry.

Philip Ledger (1937-2012) was an English conductor, composer, organist, pianist, lecturer and teacher. He was educated at Bexhill grammar school and King’s College, Cambridge. As a teenager, he won top prizes in the fellowship examination of the Royal College of Organists, and it was as an organist that he began his professional career, becoming Master of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral in 1962 – at that time, the youngest holder of such a post in the country. In 1974, Ledger succeeded Sir David Willcocks as organist and director of music at King’s College, Cambridge. His work with the chapel choir was known principally through the annual broadcast of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, but also included acclaimed recordings and a touring programme which took the choir to the US and Japan. Fairlawn Senior Choir presented the Canadian premiere of his Requiem – A Thanksgiving for Life in the spring of 2011.

John Mason Neale (1818-1866) was an English priest and scholar, best known as a hymn writer and translator, having enriched English hymnody with many ancient and medieval hymns translated from Latin and Greek. He studied at Cambridge, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1842. He was offered a parish, but chronic ill health, which was to continue throughout his life, prevented him from taking it. In 1854 Neale co-founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, an order of women in the Anglican Church dedicated to nursing the sick. Many Anglicans in his day, however, were very suspicious of anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism. Once Neale was attacked and mauled at a funeral of one of the sisters. From time to time unruly crowds threatened to stone him or to burn his house. He received no honour or preferment in England, and his doctorate was bestowed by an American college (Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut). However, his basic goodness eventually won the confidence of many who had fiercely opposed him, and the Sisterhood of St. Margaret survived and prospered.

John Rutter (b. 1945) is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music. He studied music at Clare College, England, and later became the College’s first full-time Director of Music in 1975, leading the choir to international prominence. In 1981 he founded his own professional choir, the Cambridge Singers, with which he has made many recordings of the sacred choral repertoire. Rutter’s music is very well known and much beloved in choral circles, and is performed worldwide. His larger-scale works – particularly his Gloria (1974), Requiem (1985), and Magnificat (1990) are also well established in the choral repertoire, and the late Sir David Willcocks considered him to be the most gifted composer of his generation.

James Chadwick (1813-1882) was an Anglo-Irish Roman Catholic priest. He is most well known for writing the lyrics of the Christmas carol “Angels We Have Heard on High”.