Grandisson Service of Lessons and Carols

Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 December at 6pm

All are welcome at this unique service of lessons and carols for Christmas, which opens with Bishop John de Grandisson’s service for Christmas. Still Exeter’s longest-serving bishop (1327-69), Bishop Grandisson wrote his service specifically for Exeter Cathedral, using its Choristers and architecture to provide a unique start to Exeter’s Christmas celebrations. The service continues with well-known readings, music and hymns.

When the present Cathedral was newly completed, Bishop Grandisson, inserted into the Christmas liturgy a special ceremony. In ‘this most holy night’ of Christmas Eve two choristers with lighted tapers emerge from behind the high altar and, with the rest of the Choir, announce the birth of our saviour, first in the Quire, then in the Nave. Our modern service begins with this ancient ceremony, its words taken from the Ordinale Exoniensis of 1369, set to music by Thomas Armstrong (Organist of Exeter Cathedral from 1928 to 1933). The Good News of the Nativity of Jesus Christ is then proclaimed more fully in readings of scripture, hymns and carols. While we refer to the texts sung by the Choir as ‘carols’, several of them are more properly motets, anthems or antiphons, although each seeks to reflect upon the adjacent scripture.