"The Virgin's Cradle Hymn" is a short

lullaby A lullaby (), or a cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies, they are used to pass down cultural knowl ...

text. It was collected while on a tour of Germany by the English poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...

, and published in his '' Sibylline Leaves'' of 1817.Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Sibylline Leaves
' (Rest Fenner, 1817), 260 According to his own note, Coleridge copied the Latin text from a "print of the Blessed Virgin in a Catholic village in Germany", which he later translated into English. The text, actually from a collection of devotional Flemish engravings by

Hieronymus Wierix Hieronymus Wierix (1553–1619) was a Flemish engraver, draughtsman and publisher. He is known for his reproductive engravings after the work of well-known local and foreign artists including Albrecht Dürer. Together with other members of the ...

, has inspired a number of modern choral and vocal musical settings.

Background

Coleridge embarked upon his tour of Germany with his close friend

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poetry, Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism, Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Balla ...

in 1798 shortly after the publication of their ''

Lyrical Ballads ''Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems'' is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. ...

'' of 1798. It was in May 1799, the eleventh month of his tour, that he encountered the print in a village inn. His diary records that it was either Womarshausen or Giebaldhausen, both Roman Catholic villages in the vicinity of

Mainz Mainz (; #Names and etymology, see below) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, and with around 223,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 35th-largest city. It lies in ...

.Cynthia Kaldis, "The Virgin's Cradle Hymn" in ''Latin Music Through the Ages'', Volume 1 (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1991) The print itself was of Dutch origin, from a book entitled ''Jesu Christi Dei Domini Salvatoris nostra Infantia'' ("The Infancy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"), a collection of prints and accompanying verse by

Flemish Flemish may refer to: * Flemish, adjective for Flanders, Belgium * Flemish region, one of the three regions of Belgium *Flemish Community, one of the three constitutionally defined language communities of Belgium * Flemish dialects, a Dutch dialec ...

engraver

(1553–1619).Gary Bachlund
The Virgin's Cradle Hymn
Retrieved 20 December 2010 The verse accompanied an image titled "The Virgin Sewing While Angels Rock Her Son to Sleep", a woodcutting of the infant Jesus asleep in a cradle, rocked by two angels, while the Virgin Mary sits alongside engaged in needlework. Coleridge sent the Latin copy to be printed in the ''Courier'' in 1801 as "A Correspondent in Germany". Despite having made a translation in his notebook, Coleridge did not consider publishing his English version of the short poem for almost ten years. He first published the two side-by-side in the ''Courier'' in 1811. Coleridge retold the story of his collection of the text and suggested that it could be sung to the tune of "the famous Sicilian Hymn ''Adeste Fideles laeti triumphantes''", nowadays better known as "

O Come All Ye Faithful "O Come, All Ye Faithful", also known as "", is a Christmas carol that has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711–1786), John Reading (1645–1692), King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), and anonymous Ciste ...

". He later published the poem and his translation in his collection ''Sibylline Leaves'' of 1817.

Text

Musical settings

Further to Coleridge's own musical suggestion, the short text has inspired a number of modern composers, and is usually titled "The Virgin's Cradle Hymn" or "Dormi, Jesu". These are mostly choral compositions, although occasionally rendered as

art song An art song is a Western world, Western vocal music Musical composition, composition, usually written for one voice with piano accompaniment, and usually in the classical music, classical art music tradition. By extension, the term "art song" is ...

s (''

lieder In the Western classical music tradition, ( , ; , ; ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German and Dutch, but among English and French speakers, is often used interchangea ...

''). These settings include: * Alexander MacKenzie (published 1892 for mezzo-soprano, piano, violin or cello) * Charles Macpherson (published 1893, SATB) *

Edward MacDowell Edward Alexander MacDowell (December 18, 1860January 23, 1908) was an American composer and pianist of the late Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites '' Woodland Sketches'', ''Sea Pieces'' and ''Ne ...

(published 1894 for voice and piano) *

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams ( ; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

(first performed 1894 for voice and piano, first published in ''The Vocalist'', April 1905 as "A cradle song") * Charles Lee Williams (organist of Gloucester Cathedral and a founder of the Three Choirs Festival, published 1903 for five-part chorus) *

Herbert Fryer George Herbert Fryer (21 May 1877 – 7 February 1957) was an English pianist, teacher and composer. Career Fryer was born in Hampstead, London in 1877, the only son of three children. His father George Henry Fryer was an insurance broker. He w ...

'
version
was published in 1918 *

Anton Webern Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...

(published 1923-4, from ''Fünf Canons'', Op. 16, No. 2) *

Edmund Rubbra Edmund Rubbra (; 23 May 190114 February 1986) was a British composer. He composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras. He was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak o ...

(published 1925, Op.3 for SATB chorus)The Virgin's Cradle Hymn
, ''The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Page'', Retrieved 20 December 2010 * Stephen Tuttle (published 1943, soprano, SSAA chorus and piano) *

John Tasker Howard John Tasker Howard (November 30, 1890 – November 20, 1964) was an early American music historian, radio host, writer, lecturer, and composer. His ''Our American Music'', published in 1931, was an early general history of music in the United St ...

(published 1947 for SSA chorus with piano accompaniment) *

Ronald Corp Ronald Geoffrey Corp, (4 January 1951 – 7 May 2025) was a British composer, conductor and Anglican priest. He was founder and artistic director of the New London Orchestra (NLO) and the New London Children's Choir. Corp was musical director ...

(published 1975, SATB) *

John Rutter Sir John Milford Rutter (born 24 September 1945) is an English composer, conductor, editor, arranger, and record producer, mainly of choral music. Biography Born on 24 September 1945 in London, the son of an industrial chemist and his wife, R ...

(SATB with organ or orchestra, commissioned for the 1999 King's College

Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols Nine Lessons and Carols, also known as the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, is a service of Christian worship traditionally celebrated on or near Christmas Eve in Anglican churches. The story of the f ...

) *

Kim André Arnesen Kim André Arnesen (born 28 November 1980) is a Norwegian composer. He grew up in Trondheim, Norway and was educated at the Music Conservatory of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is mostly known for his choral compositio ...

(published 2014, SSAATTBB) *

Jack Gibbons Jack Gibbons (born 2 March 1962) is an English-born American classical composer and virtuoso pianist. Biography Gibbons was born in England. His father was a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-o ...

(composed 2014, SA chorus and piano, first performed in English 2014 as "The Virgin's Cradle Hymn") *

Richard Rodney Bennett Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (29 March 193624 December 2012) was an English composer and pianist. He was noted for his musical versatility, drawing from such sources as jazz, romanticism, and avant-garde; and for his use of twelve-tone technique ...

(SSA chorus) *

Kevin Puts Kevin Matthew Puts (born January 3, 1972) is an American composer, best known for his opera ''The Hours (opera), The Hours'' and for winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera ''Silent Night (opera), Silent Night'' and a Grammy Award i ...

(in the pivotal

Christmas Truce The Christmas truce (; ; ) was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914. The truce occurred five months after hostilities had begun. Lulls occurred in the fighting a ...

scene of the

opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

Silent Night "Silent Night" () is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO The United Nations Educati ...

'').recording of Silent Night on NPR website
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Virgin's Cradle Hymn, The Poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Latin poetry Lullabies Christmas carols Art songs

Background

Text

Musical settings

See also

References