{"id":2250,"date":"2013-09-09T16:06:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T20:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christmasclassics.com\/christmasmusic\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2013-09-09T16:06:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T20:06:26","slug":"christmas-classics-person-of-the-day-william-chatterton-dix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christmasclassics.com\/christmasmusic\/christmas-classics-person-of-the-day-william-chatterton-dix","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: William Chatterton Dix"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this day in 1898, William Chatterton Dix died in Cheddar, Somerset, England. He was bequeathed the middle name of Chatterton in honor of Thomas Chatterton, a poet whose biography was penned by Dix’s father. For a better part of his professional life Dix was a marine insurance agency manager, yet he is best known as the Christmas carol composer of the English carols What Child Is This<\/i>?<\/span><\/strong> and As with Gladness Men of Old<\/span>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The insurance executive always nurtured a great love for poetry and hymns. His interest in both was accentuated at the age of twenty-nine when a near fatal illness and severe depression confined him to bed for months. It was also during this period when Dix wrote most of the forty hymns credited to him, including his most popular carol What Child Is This<\/i>?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The lyrics for What Child Is This<\/i>?<\/span> <\/strong>were initially part of a six-stanza poem titled The Manger Throne<\/i><\/span><\/strong>. Dix later took three of the poem’s stanzas and adapted them to the popular 16th-century tune of Greensleeves<\/i><\/span><\/strong>. In 1871 both text and tune, the latter arranged by John Stainer, were published in Bramley & Stainer’s Christmas Carols, New and Old<\/span><\/strong>, <\/i>a widely circulated compilation.<\/p>\n

The beautiful folk melody of Greensleeves <\/i>dates from Elizabethan times, perhaps even earlier, and reputedly it had less respectable lyrics sung to it in several lyrical settings. One of the earliest references to it was in 1580, and it was twice mentioned in Shakespeare’s comedy play, The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/i><\/span><\/strong>. In the 1642 New Christmas Carols<\/em><\/span><\/strong> black-letter edition, a variant tune of Greensleeves<\/i> <\/span><\/strong>was used in the carol The Old Year Now Away Is Fled<\/i><\/span><\/strong>. Strains of the melody were also heard in John Gay\u2019s 1728 satirical ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera<\/span><\/strong>.<\/i><\/p>\n

The providence of history is such that Greensleeves<\/i> might be much lesser known if not for a strange illness that befell William Chatterton Dix. His effort to string religious pearls from his lengthy T<\/span>he Manger Throne<\/span><\/strong>,<\/i> and the sometimes less respectable Greensleeves<\/i><\/span><\/strong> <\/i>tune, ultimately prove successful with the issuance of What Child Is This?<\/i><\/span><\/strong> Since its 1871 publication, the beloved carol has been sustained by repeated publication and acclaim for its reverential treatment of the Nativity theme.<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

William Chatterton Dix<\/p><\/div>\n

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