Noel Nouvelet: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Noël nouvelet" is an old French carol in a minor key; Hymnary.org lists its tune simply as an old French melody, in E minor and the meter 11.10.11.10.[1] How old it is cannot be stated precisely from the sources consulted here, which differ: the Jesus College, Cambridge, archive record of a choral arrangement by the musician Peter Hurford labels it a French carol "probably" of the sixteenth century,[2] while a Choristers Guild teaching guide places it in the fifteenth century and describes it as a New Year's carol.[3] The hobbyist reference site The Hymns and Carols of Christmas likewise dates it to the late fifteenth century and calls it a New Year's carol, and it reports that the editors of The New Oxford Book of Carols took their text from a 1721 Troyes edition of the Grande Bible des Noëls.[4] Such "Bibles des Noëls" were popular, poorly printed carol books, many of them from Troyes printers; in an 1857 study of them, the lawyer and local historian Charles Ribault de Laugardière named "Noël nouvelet" among the long, general noëls that recur from one Bible to the next.[5]

Fifteenth-century French stained-glass panel of Mary and Joseph kneeling beside the newborn Christ child

The Nativity, French stained glass, ca. 1440. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject and its French origin; it has no connection to the carol.

In The Oxford Book of Carols of 1928 the melody appears, arranged by Martin Shaw, as the Easter carol "Love is come again," which opens "Now the green blade riseth"; a note there explains that J. M. C. Crum made the words for an old French melody linked with "Noël nouvelet."[6] Crum (1872-1958) was a Church of England priest who served as a canon of Canterbury from 1928 to 1943; his text was first printed in the United States in the 1966 Methodist Hymnal. Marcel Dupré also used the tune, as the basis of his organ Variations on a Noel, Op. 20 (1922).[7] For Christmas, the same melody carries "Sing We Now of Christmas," which The United Methodist Hymnal prints as a traditional French carol with no named translator, set in Shaw's 1928 harmonization.[8] Hymnary.org lists "Love Is Come Again," "Sing We Now of Christmas," and "Jesus Christ Is Waiting" among the texts set to the tune.[1]

Find books with Noel Nouvelet for sale →

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "NOEL NOUVELET".
  2. Jesus College, Cambridge, Archives: "Noël Nouvelet" (Peter Hurford papers, JCPP/Hurford/1/1/93).
  3. Choristers Guild: "Sing We Now of Christmas".
  4. The Hymns and Carols of Christmas: "Noel Nouvelet - French Noel".
  5. Internet Archive: Charles Ribault de Laugardière, "La bible des noëls, étude bibliographique et littéraire" (Bourges, 1857).
  6. Internet Archive: Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, "The Oxford Book of Carols" (1928).
  7. Discipleship Ministries, The United Methodist Church: "History of Hymns: Now the Green Blade Riseth".
  8. Hymnary.org: "Sing We Now of Christmas" (The United Methodist Hymnal, no. 237).