This page is provided so that you can hear the tunes of items which we use in church. Mostly they are written by the vicar. Please note that they are copyright - we are very happy to give permission to you to use them, but we would like to hear about it. Please include any use on your Christian Copyright Licence returns.
Down this page:
- the words,
- the story,
- the sheet music,
- media player.
While shepherds watched
While shepherds watched
While shepherds watched their flocks,
all seated on the ground,
an angel of the Lord came down,
and glory shone around.
"Fear not," said he, for mighty dread
had seized their troubled mind,
"Glad tidings of great joy I bring
to you and all mankind."
"To you in David's town
is born of David's line
a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord,
and this shall be the sign:
the heavenly babe you there shall find
to human view displayed,
all meanly wrapped in swathing bands
and in a manger laid."
Thus spoke the seraph there
to shepherds in the night:
a throng of angels praising God
appeared and blazed with light:
"All glory be to God on high,
and to the earth be peace;
good will henceforth from heaven to men
begin and never cease."
Words copyright © John Hartley 2005, adapted from Nahum Tate (1652-1715).
Story behind the song
I got the idea for this tune several years before writing it down like this - firstly by wondering whether it was possible to use Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony for the first two lines of the traditional Christmas carol. I wondered if it was possible to impose a fanfare on the quiet scene, to denote the shock of the angel arriving, in the same way as the hunt arrives and disrupts the quiet in Rossini's "William Tell" overture. Further thought made me wonder if the same scheme could be made to fit verse 3 - announcing a Saviour, and verse 5, when the throng of angels arrive. So I was looking for words and tune in three 8-line verses rather than six 4-line ones. Two problems remained: how to remove two syllables from the first line of each of the new verses, and how to arrange the words so that the third line of each verse denotes the arrival of the new "shock factor".
John Hartley
Windows Media Player. When you click the left-hand "play" button your computer should have started to play the tune. If it didn't, you might be able to get the tune by clicking here, or by right-clicking the link, choosing "save target as", saving it onto your computer, and then opening it with a music-playing program.
Please remember that a midi file of a tune isn't supposed to be a state-of-the-art musical arrangement - it is only supposed to give a basic idea of how the tune goes. Any reasonable organist / keyboard player / music group could make it sound far better.