Short Name: | John Francis Wade |
Full Name: | Wade, John Francis, 1711 or 1712-1786 |
Birth Year: | 1711 |
Death Year: | 1786 |
John Francis Wade (b. England, c. 1711; d. Douay, France, 1786) is now generally recognized as both author and composer of the hymn "Adeste fideles," originally written in Latin in four stanzas. The earliest manuscript signed by Wade is dated about 1743. By the early nineteenth century, however, four additional stanzas had been added by other writers. A Roman Catholic, Wade apparently moved to France because of discrimination against Roman Catholics in eighteenth-century England—especially so after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. He taught music at an English college in Douay and hand copied and sold chant music for use in the chapels of wealthy families. Wade's copied manuscripts were published as Cantus Diversi pro Dominicis et Festis per annum (1751).
Bert Polman
Tunes by John Francis Wade (6)![]() | As | Instances | Incipit |
---|---|---|---|
FOUNDATION (American) | John F. Wade's "Cantus Diversi," 1751 (Composer (attributed to)) | 1 | 56161 51131 35561 |
ADESTE FIDELES | John F. Wade (Composer (attributed to)) | 1 | |
[How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord] (51111) | John F. Wade (Composer) | 1 | 51111 53511 11233 |
SAVE, MIGHTY LORD | J. F. Wade (Composer) | 1 | 57775 11543 1715 |
ADESTE FIDELES | John Francis Wade (Composer) | 168 | 11512 55323 43211 |
ST. THOMAS (Wade) | John Francis Wade (Composer) | 60 | 12312 34365 43221 |