In the Bleak Mid-Winter

Composer: HOLST, Gustav
  • Composed between 1904-05, “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” has become a staple Christmas carol for the holiday season. The carol was printed in the first edition of The English Hymnal in 1906.
  • For text, Holst set a poem by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) titled “A Christmas Carol.”1 Read the full text for the carol here.
  • *Excerpt from The Stories of Twelve Carols: 2022 Edition:
    • The combination of Rossetti’s poetic text and Holst’s ethereal music is highly evocative of the season in the Northern Hemisphere. Though Bethlehem likely would not have been covered in snow at the time of Jesus’s birth, snow has long been associated with the event as a symbol of purity.

Sources

  1. “In the Bleak Midwinter (Holst, Gustav),” IMSLP, accessed December 12, 2024, https://imslp.org/wiki/In_the_Bleak_Midwinter_(Holst%2C_Gustav).

Cut IDs

23570 12229 16621 20608 45028 17541 16659