O Come All Ye Faithful
John Francis Wade
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Browse piano sheets by John Francis Wade on Zen Virtual Piano. John Francis Wade was a Catholic layman who fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. There he lived with exiled English Catholics, taught music and worked on church music for private use. The Obituary List of the Catholic Directory for 1787 records his death on 16 August 1786 and calls him a layman aged 75. The same entry adds that his beautiful manuscript books were found in abundance in chapels and in private families, and that he chiefly spent his time writing them and teaching the Latin and church song. Teaching music among exiled English Catholics in France, beside a membership record at Leeds in England in 1734, may point to a life that touched both France and England. In 1731 the Rosary Confraternity at Bornhem, Belgium, has him on record as a member, and he likely received his training in calligraphy there. He is recorded with the same group in Leeds, England, in 1734. His manuscripts are often in a wide range of colours and metallic pigments. Training likely received in calligraphy, beside manuscripts in many colours and metallic pigments, may hint at a scribe whose schooling shows in the look of his pages. Authorship of the hymn "Adeste fideles" is disputed, with the 13th-century cardinal St. Bonaventure and King John IV of Portugal proposed as alternative composers. The earliest known manuscripts of the hymn, discovered from 1946, all bear Wade's signature. The hymn was once credited to John Reading, an attribution promulgated by Vincent Novello. Multiple scholars have dismissed this, because Reading's works do not contain the tune and no known sources for it date earlier than the 1740s. A cardinal and a king proposed as alternative composers, beside the 1787 Catholic Directory obituary calling Wade a layman, may suggest a contrast in standing between the names attached to the tune. Bennett Zon allowed that someone other than Wade may have composed "Adeste fideles", since none of the tunes in his manuscripts were ever given an author. Wade was also not credited as the composer in the printed sources of the tune while he was still alive. Bennett Zon's point that no tune in Wade's manuscripts was given an author, beside the signature Wade placed on the earliest known manuscripts of the hymn, may suggest that a signature and an attribution of authorship are different things.
Browse piano sheets by John Francis Wade on Zen Virtual Piano.
John Francis Wade was a Catholic layman who fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed. There he lived with exiled English Catholics, taught music and worked on church music for private use. The Obituary List of the Catholic Directory for 1787 records his death on 16 August 1786 and calls him a layman aged 75. The same entry adds that his beautiful manuscript books were found in abundance in chapels and in private families, and that he chiefly spent his time writing them and teaching the Latin and church song. Teaching music among exiled English Catholics in France, beside a membership record at Leeds in England in 1734, may point to a life that touched both France and England.
In 1731 the Rosary Confraternity at Bornhem, Belgium, has him on record as a member, and he likely received his training in calligraphy there. He is recorded with the same group in Leeds, England, in 1734. His manuscripts are often in a wide range of colours and metallic pigments. Training likely received in calligraphy, beside manuscripts in many colours and metallic pigments, may hint at a scribe whose schooling shows in the look of his pages.
Authorship of the hymn "Adeste fideles" is disputed, with the 13th-century cardinal St. Bonaventure and King John IV of Portugal proposed as alternative composers. The earliest known manuscripts of the hymn, discovered from 1946, all bear Wade's signature. The hymn was once credited to John Reading, an attribution promulgated by Vincent Novello. Multiple scholars have dismissed this, because Reading's works do not contain the tune and no known sources for it date earlier than the 1740s. A cardinal and a king proposed as alternative composers, beside the 1787 Catholic Directory obituary calling Wade a layman, may suggest a contrast in standing between the names attached to the tune.
Bennett Zon allowed that someone other than Wade may have composed "Adeste fideles", since none of the tunes in his manuscripts were ever given an author. Wade was also not credited as the composer in the printed sources of the tune while he was still alive. Bennett Zon's point that no tune in Wade's manuscripts was given an author, beside the signature Wade placed on the earliest known manuscripts of the hymn, may suggest that a signature and an attribution of authorship are different things.
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John Francis Wade
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John Francis Wade, a Catholic layman, taught music in France and worked on church music for private use while living among exiled English Catholics.
Wade fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed.
Wade wrote beautiful manuscript books that were found in abundance in chapels and private families, often in a wide range of colours and metallic pigments. The earliest known manuscripts of "Adeste fideles", discovered from 1946, all bear his signature.
Authorship is disputed. St. Bonaventure and King John IV of Portugal have been proposed as alternative composers, and Bennett Zon left open that someone other than Wade composed it, though the earliest known manuscripts all bear Wade's signature.