Every Christmas, millions sing a tune called 'Cranham' without knowing where the name comes from. In 1906, Gustav Holst — born in nearby Cheltenham in 1874 — composed the melody for Christina Rossetti's poem 'In the Bleak Midwinter' while staying in this quiet Gloucestershire village. His friend and mentor Ralph Vaughan Williams had commissioned three carols for The English Hymnal, published that October by Oxford University Press. Holst wrote the tune at a house now called Midwinter Cottage, opposite the Black Horse Inn, where his family had deep roots — his grandparents and mother had lived in the parish. Rossetti's poem, first published in 1872 in the American magazine Scribner's Monthly, is irregular in metre, and Holst's achievement was to craft a melody adaptable enough to follow its shifting rhythms while remaining simple enough for a congregation to sing. The result is one of the most enduring pieces of English church music. A rival setting by Harold Darke, composed in 1911 for a trained choir, was voted the best Christmas carol by leading choirmasters in a 2008 poll — but it is Holst's congregational version that most people know. The next time you hear 'In the Bleak Midwinter' on Christmas Eve, you are hearing the woods and valleys around this very spot, distilled into song.
“Rossetti's poem, first published in 1872 in the American magazine Scribner's Monthly, is irregular in metre, and Holst's achievement was to craft a melody adaptable enough to follow its shifting rhythms while remaining simple enough for a congregation to sing.”
