O Come O Come Emmanuel – Gibson Song Book

Introduction

For Advent 2025-26, I’m going to be using the Johnathan Gibson Prayer Book O Come O Come Emmanuel as my daily bible study and quiet time. The book uses many different ways to worship using reflections, prayers, readings and praise sections. There are some suggestions in the appendix for tunes, but for some pieces, it has the comment “Traditionally chanted.” For these ones, and some common sections, I’ve decided to set the songs using musescore and have it publicly released for free.

The following is a collection of songs that can be used during both Short and Long Praise sections before and after the teaching sections. I’ve also included the Psalm 72 Doxology at the end of each session.

This is provided as is. The PDF’s may or may not have lyrics if I am unsure if they are in the public domain, and some settings I’m not sure if the harmonies are recent enough to be considered in the public domain or not.

So, here’s the beginning of a song book for Advent!

Song book

Praise before Reading (Short Praise)

Praise after Reading (Longer Praise)

Advent

Praise settings in these weeks from the Romantic period (19th Century).
The Last two settings are are from the Middle Ages.

O Antiphons

These are chants that have been used by the church for centuries, with the text likely written in the 6th Century. A recording of all the “O” Antiphons can be found in this YouTube link.

Christmas Eve

Christmas to Epiphany

Praises in these weeks are primarily from the Baroque period (17th-18th Century), although with some 20th Century updates. I might see if I can find an earlier setting of the Magnificat chant later on. (EDIT: I finally did! I’m using some English Renaissance settings.) The last two settings are from the Middle Ages.

# The original setting was written for two choirs. I have kept the Full, Descant and Cantor distinctions if you wanted to do some call and response.
* The Gloria in Excelsis in the YouTube will repeat the line “you take away the sin of the world” 4 times, with slight differences.

Postlude