Often sung congregationally to BERKSHIRE, CHURCH TRIUMPHANT, DEVONSHIRE or DUNELM, Charles Wesley's much-loved Christmas hymn receives a new setting from Nigel Ogden. His skills as an outstanding performer, best known perhaps as host of the evergreen Radio 2 series The Organist Entertains, guarantee both a light touch and a serious musical content. Eminently practical, To us a Child of Royal Birth may be performed by single voices or SATB choir without divisions. The music artfully distributes the four verses between full chorus, upper voices, lower voices, and then tutti again. Ogden's winning command of a popular musical idiom is everywhere in evidence, in the beautifully resolved seventh and ninth chords, and in the assured movement of the anthem from its opening key of E flat to its conclusion in a bright and warm resolution of C major.