Looking to the Light: Songs of Christmas

Louise Page

Louise Page graduated with distinction from the Canberra School of Music in 1988 and was an ABC Young Performer of the Year vocal finalist. She won the inaugural Song Recital Competition in 1995 and has appeared widely in recital, oratorio and opera.

Phillipa Candy

Phillipa Candy is a Canberra pianist whose recital work ranges across art song, operetta and Christmas programmes. Her Move recordings capture concert repertoire shaped for Australian audiences.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was a German composer and organist of the late Baroque. His sacred and secular music for choir, orchestra, organ and solo instruments remains among the foundations of the Western concert and church repertory.

Charles Gounod

Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, conductor and organist of the Romantic era. His operas include the enduringly popular Faust, and his sacred and salon pieces remain staples of the repertoire.

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was a German-born Baroque composer who settled in London and became a naturalised British subject. He is celebrated for his operas, English oratorios, organ concertos and orchestral works.

William Garnet James

William Garnet James (1892–1977) was an Australian pianist and composer who became a pioneer of music broadcasting as the ABC’s first Director of Music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He wrote over 600 works, many of them pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic and choral music, and remains among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Adolphe Adam

Adolphe Adam (1803–1856) was a French composer of operas and ballets. He is remembered above all for Giselle, Le corsaire, and the Christmas carol O Holy Night.

Andy Beck

Ralph Blane

Ralph Blane (1914–1995) was an American composer and lyricist whose stage and film songs became lasting standards. His best-known work includes the seasonal classic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Katherine K. Davis

John Sullivan Dwight

Don Gardner

Mona Gould

Kenneth Grahame

Franz Xaver Gruber

Franz Xaver Gruber wrote the melody of Silent Night, the Christmas carol first heard at midnight Mass in 1818. Later arrangements for organ and orchestra, with other carols and masses of his, remain in print and in Austrian church use.

Michael Head

Wilfrid Holland

Robert MacGimsey

Hugh Martin

Hugh Martin's score for the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis gave Judy Garland three lasting songs: The Boy Next Door, The Trolley Song and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, now a seasonal standard across the English-speaking world.

Joseph Mohr

Joseph Mohr (1792–1848) was an Austrian Catholic priest and writer who wrote the words to the Christmas carol Silent Night.

Henry Onorati

John W. Peterson

John W. Peterson (1921–2006) was an American songwriter whose evangelical Christian output includes more than a thousand songs and some thirty-five cantatas, among them Night of Miracles.

Ned Rorem

Margaret Rose

John Rox

Harry Simeone

Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) was an English Congregational minister, hymn writer and theologian. Credited with some 750 hymns, he is widely recognised as a founding figure of English hymnody.

James Wheeler