Royal Christmas

Christmas in Ireland is the largest celebration of the year although 8 December is traditionally viewed as the start of Christmas with many putting up their decorations and Christmas trees. Irish Christmas traditions are similar to those in most Western countries.

John Rutter’s glorious stream of Christmas miniatures has made him, for many, an essential ingredient in the festive season. The composer and conductor wrote what is probably his most popular piece, “Shepherd’s Pipe Carol,” while still an 18-year-old undergraduate at Cambridge—and he has never looked back. “Once I started writing carols, somehow it seemed difficult to stop,” Rutter tells Apple Music. “I’ve been doing it ever since.” Realizing that he had a “backlog” of them led him to I Sing of a Maiden, an EP of five new pieces recorded in July 2021. “I’m asked, ‘Do you still enjoy Christmas?’ And actually, I sincerely do,” says Rutter. “Christmas carols are a resilient form of art—folk art, as I’ve often suggested—that have attracted some extraordinarily fine composers. They were adding their little tile to a centuries-old mosaic of devotion, praise, joy, prayer, and celebration. It all makes up that extraordinary season of the year that we call Christmas.”

The album combines the group’s original vocal and instrumental tracks from their 100-million-selling catalogue with new orchestral arrangements by Richard Carpenter, conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London.