Charlotte Church - "O Holy Night " 2000 - Dormition Abbey

"O Holy Night" ("Cantique de Noël") is a well-known Christmas carol composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem "Minuit, chrétiens" (Midnight, Christians) by Placide Cappeau (1808--1877). Cappeau, a wine merchant and poet, had been asked by a parish priest to write a Christmas poem. Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight,editor of Dwight's Journal of Music, created a singing edition based on Cappeau's French text in 1855. In both the French original and in the two familiar English versions of the carol, the text reflects on the birth of Jesus and of mankind's redemption.

On 24 December 1906, Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian inventor, broadcast the first AM radio program, which started with a phonograph record of Handel's aria "Ombra mai fu" followed by Fessenden playing "O Holy Night" on the violin and singing the final verse. The carol therefore was the second piece of music to be broadcast on radio . Songs of Praise is a BBC Television religious programme based around Christian hymns which began in October 1961. The first edition was broadcast from the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Cardiff, and the series is now one of the longest-running on television anywhere in the world - Courtesy Wikipedia