Emeritus Fellow and former Informator Choristarum Bill Ives has been commissioned to write a new Christmas carol for this year’s Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. The new carol will be broadcast live from King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, on Christmas Eve to an estimated audience of 160 million listeners.
Every year since 1983, King’s College has commissioned a new carol to be sung at the service.
This year Bill Ives has composed a setting of a new Christmas poem, Three Points of Light, by Peter Cairns, who sang in King’s College Choir in the 1960s.
“Three Points of Light: the light of the star, the light of the shepherd’s fire, and the light in the stable,” Bill writes. “The poem conjures a compelling rural scene and we are drawn into the story by these three elements; lights which, together, form the Light of the World.
The music aims to reflect the atmosphere of that scene: the cold, the stillness, the mystery, and the joy.”
The service is broadcast live on Christmas Eve at 3 o’clock on BBC R4 and on the BBC World Service.
Bill was the Organist and Informator Choristarum of the Choir of Magdalen College for 18 years, in which time he was also a Fellow and a Tutor in Music. Daniel Hyde, now Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge, was also Informator Choristarum here between 2009 and 2016.
