The Bible and Music

During class on Monday, we listened to a piece that sounded like the classic Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?” but quickly learned that further back in history, the piece was actually originally titled, “Greensleeves.” This was very interesting to me because I didn’t expect a well-known Christmas carol to have been originally scored for a different piece entirely unrelated to the Christmas season. I really like that we are learning more about pieces that we thought we knew but actually have very intriguing histories behind them. After talking about “Greensleeves,” I find myself wanting to look into the origins of other Christmas carols. Was “What Child Is This” the only Christmas carol to start off being unrelated to the season? Or did many other well-known songs find their origins in unexpected places?