O Come, All Ye Faithful



"O Come, All Ye Faithful" (originally written in Latin as Adeste Fideles) is a Christmas carol which has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711–1786), John Reading (1645–1692) and King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), with the earliest manuscript of the hymn bearing his name, located in the library of the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa.

The original four verses of the hymn were extended to a total of eight, and these have been translated into many languages. The English translation of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" by the English Catholic priest Frederick Oakeley, written in 1841, is widespread in most English speaking countries. The present harmonisation is from the English Hymnal (1906).

An original manuscript of the oldest known version, dating from 1751, is held by Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

Tune
Besides John Francis Wade, the tune has been purported to be written by several musicians, from John Reading and his son to Handel and even Gluck, including the Portuguese composers Marcos Portugal or the king John IV of Portugal himself. Thomas Arne, whom Wade knew, is another possible composer. There are several similar musical themes written around that time, though it can be hard to determine whether these were written in imitation of the hymn, the hymn was based on them, or they are totally unconnected.

Wade included it in his own publication of Cantus Diversi (1751). It was published again in the 1760 edition of Evening Offices of the Church. It also appeared in Samuel Webbe's An Essay on the Church Plain Chant (1782).

Lyrics (English text following Frederick Oakeley)
There are additional Latin verses in various sources. For example: {| Vocati pastores adproperant: Et nos ovanti gradu festinemus, Venite adoremus (3×) Dominum.
 * En grege relicto, humiles ad cunas,

Stella duce, Magi Christum adorantes, Aurum, tus et myrrham dant munera. Iesu infanti corda præbeamus Venite adoremus (3×) Dominum.

Æterni parentis splendorem æternum Velatum sub carne videbimus Deum infantem pannis involutum Venite adoremus (3×) Dominum.

Pro nobis egenum et fœno cubantem, Piis foveamus amplexibus. Sic nos amantem quis non redamaret? Venite adoremus (3×) Dominum.

Cantet nunc hymnos chorus angelorum Cantet nunc aula cælestium, Gloria in excelsis Deo! Venite adoremus (3×) Dominum.

Text
The original text has been from time to time attributed to various groups and individuals, including St. Bonaventure in the 13th century or King John IV of Portugal in the 17th, though it was more commonly believed that the text was written by an order of monks, the Cistercian, German, Portuguese and Spanish orders having, at various times, been given credit.

The original text consisted of four Latin verses, and it was with these that the hymn was originally published. John Francis Wade had written the hymn in Latin in 1744, and was first published in 1751. The Abbé wrote an additional three verses in the 18th century; these are normally printed as the third to fifth of seven verses, while another, anonymous, additional Latin verse is rarely printed. The text has been translated innumerable times, but the most used version today is the English "O Come, All Ye Faithful". This is a combination of one of Frederick Oakeley's translations of the original four verses and William Thomas Brooke's of the three additional ones, which was first published in Murray's Hymnal in 1852. Oakeley originally titled the song “Ye Faithful, approach ye” when it was sung at his Margaret Church in Marylebone before it was altered to its current form.

King John IV
The most commonly named Portuguese author is King John IV of Portugal. "The Musician King" (1604–1656, came to the throne in 1640) was a patron of music and the arts and a considerably sophisticated writer on music; in addition, he was a composer, and during his reign he collected one of the largest musical libraries in the world (destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake). The first part of his musical work was published in 1649. He founded a Music School in Vila Viçosa that "exported" musicians to Spain and Italy and it was at his Vila Viçosa palace that the two 1640 manuscripts of the "Portuguese Hymn" were found. Those manuscripts predate Wade's eighteenth-century manuscript. Among the King's writings is a Defense of Modern Music (Lisbon, 1649). In the same year (1649) he had a huge struggle to get instrumental music approved by the Vatican for use in the Catholic Church. His other famous composition is a setting of the Crux fidelis, a work that remains highly popular during Lent amongst church choirs.

Jacobite connection
The hymn has been interpreted as a Jacobite birth ode to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Professor Bennett Zon, head of music at Durham University, has interpreted it this way, claiming that the secret political code was decipherable by the "faithful" (the Jacobites), with "Bethlehem" a common Jacobite cipher for England and Regem Angelorum a pun on Angelorum (Angels) and Anglorum (English). Wade had fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. From the 1740s to 1770s the earliest forms of the carol commonly appeared in English Roman Catholic liturgical books close to prayers for the exiled Old Pretender. In the books by Wade it was often decorated with Jacobite floral imagery, as were other liturgical texts with coded Jacobite meanings.

Performance
In performance verses are often omitted, either because the hymn is too long in its entirety or because the words are unsuitable for the day on which they are sung. For example the eighth anonymous verse is only sung on Epiphany, if at all; while the last verse of the original is normally reserved for Christmas Midnight Mass, Mass at Dawn or Mass During the Day.

In the United Kingdom and United States it is often sung today in an arrangement by Sir David Willcocks, which was originally published in 1961 by Oxford University Press in the first book in the Carols for Choirs series. This arrangement makes use of the basic harmonisation from The English Hymnal but adds a soprano descant in verse six (verse three in the original) with its reharmonised organ accompaniment, and a last verse harmonisation in verse seven (verse four in the original), which is sung in unison.

This carol has served as the second-last hymn sung at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, after the last lesson from Chapter 1 of the Gospel of John.

Recordings, film music and other arrangements
Numerous versions have been recorded by artists of various genres from all around the world:
 * The song has been recorded as "Julotta", which Gunnar Wiklund did. Under the same title, the song was also recorded by Anna-Lena Löfgren and Artur Erikson on the 1969 album Jul, jul, strålande jul.
 * 1992: An instrumental version is played by a symphony orchestra inside the Carnegie Hall in the film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York; also appears in the 1989 film National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
 * 1999: As "Dagen är kommen", the song was recorded by Swedish female singer Carola Häggkvist on her Christmas album Jul i Betlehem
 * 2006: Twisted Sister recorded it on their album A Twisted Christmas, arranged in the same style as their 1984 song "We're Not Gonna Take It" (lead singer Dee Snider has said the song inspired him to write that hit song)
 * 2011: Mariah Carey recorded a version, the second single from the album Merry Christmas II You
 * 2011: Hillsong Worship released a version entitled "O Come Let Us Adore Him", with added choruses; released on the EP Born Is the King and the album We Have a Saviour
 * 2015: Indonesian composer and pianist Ananda Sukarlan made a "Fantasy and Passacaglia on Adeste Fideles" for piano solo, and recorded it himself in his CD "A Virtuosic Christmas"
 * 2016: The a cappella group Pentatonix released a version of the song on their album A Pentatonix Christmas
 * 2016: The original version in Latin (Adeste fideles) was included in the album Laura Xmas by Italian singer Laura Pausini

The Portuguese hymn
The hymn was known as the Portuguese Hymn after the Duke of Leeds in 1795 heard it sung at the Portuguese embassy in London. However, the translation that he heard differs greatly from the Oakeley-Brooke translation, and was over forty years after John Francis Wade had published the hymn in 1751.

A different account of the story is that King John IV of Portugal wrote this hymn to accompany his daughter Catherine of Braganza to England, where she married King Charles II.

The Sacred Harp hymn tune "Portuguese Hymn" in 9 11 11 meter with 7 7 10 refrain ("Hither Ye Faithful, Haste with Songs of Triumph") is slightly different from the usual tune.