Our traditional December concert this year focuses on one of the greatest and best loved Christmas works, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe du minuit pour Noël, apparently written around 1690 for Midnight Mass at the Jesuit church in Paris, Saint-Louis le Grand.  It owes its distinctive character to Charpentier’s clever incorporation of a number of beautiful French noels or Christmas carols.

In the second half we explore Christmas music from early 17th-century Germany and Spain to 19th-century Yorkshire, ending with John Foster’s famous choral and orchestral setting of ‘While Shepherds watched their flocks by night’, published in 1822 and still sung in the pubs around Sheffield.  As in previous years, Psalmody and the John Jenkins Consort are joined by a choir of children drawn from local schools, one of our developing educational initiatives.