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Contact: Joe King, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-4299

November 22, 2005

'Angels We Have Heard on High'
named 2005 Carol of the Year

DeKalb, Ill. — By his own estimate, William Studwell has devoted nearly 6,000 hours of his life to researching, writing about and talking about Christmas carols. In all that time, few carols he encountered have been shrouded in more misinformation than his selection for the 2005 Carol of the Year, “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

“Sometimes, you have to be a bit of a detective,” says Studwell, 69, a professor emeritus from Northern Illinois University who began researching carols in 1972 and initiated his Carol of the Year series in 1986 to draw attention to what he believes is an important, but underappreciated, musical genre.

In the case of “Angels We Have Heard on High,” his snooping turned up tales tracing the origins of the song to the year A.D. 129, when Bishop Telesphorus of Rome ordered the singing of a nativity hymn. That song, legend holds, ultimately evolved into the refrain of a famous French carol which was translated into its English form in the 19 th century.

“It’s a great story, but there are three enormous problems with it,” says Studwell, a retired university librarian and musical gumshoe who is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on Christmas carols. “One is the infinitesimally tiny odds that any piece of music could survive for nearly two millenniums. Another is the total lack of any historical documentation for the incident. And the other is the style of music in question, which clearly indicates composition in the modern era.”

Studwell is able to make such bold declarations thanks to years of exhaustive research. At the peak of his research he had a room full of tables stacked high with more than 400 reference volumes. He also immersed himself in collections at the Library of Congress, the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, Indiana University and his home base at NIU. He also sought out information from around the globe.

From an academic standpoint, Studwell’s undertaking was relatively new. Little formal attention was paid to Christmas carols prior to 1822, when the first known compilation of English language carols was produced. Prior to that, the songs existed as, at best, scattered bits of sheet music; more often, the tunes and lyrics were passed down from generation to generation as folk songs. Very often, as in the case of this year’s carol, even the name of the author was lost to the mists of time.

“You can usually find some documentation for a carol written in the 19 th or 20 th century, but, for 16 th century songs, you are happy for any shred of information you can find,” says Studwell who is credited with being able to document dozens of new facts about carols. He has even successfully challenged the conventional wisdom regarding a handful of carols.

“I’ve had many other researchers tell me that my work is consistently the most reliable,” says the author of four books and more than 50 journal articles on the topic of carols. He has also conducted more than 400 media interviews as part of his Carol of the Year series, now in the 20th year of a planned 25-year run.

As for “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Studwell’s investigation led him to conclude that the piece likely was not a folk carol (as legend holds). Instead, it was a product of 18 th century France that was known in England by 1816, when it served as the inspiration for the carol “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”

“Angels We Have Heard on High” was first formally published in France in 1855 and a translation appeared in England under the current title in 1862. He found the earliest known occurrence of the modern version in a rare (only three or four copies are known to exist) 1916 collection of carols, which seems to have been almost universally adopted after that date.

The song’s checkered past makes “Angels We Have Heard on High” perhaps the most historically fragile of all the international-class Christmas carols, Studwell says, but the modern version of the song is truly one of the best of all carols.

“It is a remarkable melodic blend of grace and subtle dynamism. In all, ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’ is one of the most tasteful, enduring and appreciated of our carols.”

Studwell, who retired from Northern Illinois University in 2001, now resides in Bloomington, Ind. He can be reached at (812) 330-1996.

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