Among the traditional favourites being sung by concert-goers this year will be hundreds of pieces written by modern composers

As many as 300 new carols have been written this year, the result of enduring public affection and a boom in competitions and commissions from choirs, churches, schools and broadcasters.

Some of the most notable contemporary composers – Judith Weir, Michael Berkeley, Harrison Birtwistle and Roxanna Panufnik – have written 21st-century carols, and firm favourites in the choral repertoire today include modern pieces such as John Tavener’s The Lamb, and John Rutter’s Shepherd’s Pipe Carol.

Among those sponsoring the modern resurgence are BBC Radio 3 and S4C, the Welsh TV channel, and choirs including King’s College, Cambridge, the Bach Choir and the Royal Choral Society.

This Wednesday, the Christmas Festival at the Royal Albert Hall gets under way with its first concert entitled Christmas Classics. The Albert Hall website describes the show as a “traditional concert of seasonal classics”, but for the Royal Choral Society, which will be performing in front of 5,000 people, the highlight of the night will be the premiere of a new carol commissioned from Panufnik in memory of its late chairman Anthony Forbes.

Like many contemporary carols, Panufnik’s combines elements of the ancient and modern. Composers often choose older prayers and poetry to set to new music, and Panufnik chose A Cradle Song, a poem by William Blake, as she wanted to create a lullaby. “Ever since I became a mother in 2001, I’ve been very affected by this aspect of the Christmas story – the love of a mother for her child,” she said.

She recognises that many people consider new classical music to be esoteric and difficult, and believes carols are an ideal way to engage them. “There is a huge appetite for carols and it’s also a time of year when people come to church who might not always do so, so including a new carol with older ones can help people realise that new music can be very tuneful.”

Panufnik’s new carol was inspired by the impending birth of a friend’s child, which she followed on Facebook while she wrote the music, as well as her own Roman Catholic faith.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest High school charity carol singers in Newport, south Wales. Photograph: Alamy

But composers of carols are not always believers. Toby Huelin, who has created carols for schools and has written three new ones this year, is an agnostic. “For me, it’s all about the music bringing people together, and that is an essential part of Christmas,” he says. Like Panufnik, Huelin has found that carols are an ideal way to introduce conservative audiences to modern music. And like Panufnik, he too has written a lullaby as one of his carols – something that people, regardless of religious belief, can relate to.

Last year he wrote A Perfect Christmas, rooted in today’s world. “I wanted to write about how people should think not so much about shopping but about being with those they love,” he said.

One of the most poignant of modern carols was The Flight, commissioned from Richard Causton in 2015 by King’s College, Cambridge, for its Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, which is broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve each year. Causton, a fellow at King’s, set to music a poem by George Szirtes that made connections between the Bible story of Jesus, Joseph and Mary fleeing from Bethlehem to Egypt and the plight of refugees today.

King’s College has been key to the resurgence of carol writing. Its musical director, Stephen Cleobury, told the Observer: “Our festival is very well known and it is important to refresh it with new music, otherwise it would become a museum piece.” The college’s Christmas Eve service is a complex exercise – it has to remain part of the chapel’s life, which revolves around daily evensong, and it has to speak to people who know the story of the Nativity well and those who don’t. Both the chapel congregation and radio listeners around the world include not only Christians but people of other faiths and none.

“I think we have to leave people to take from the carols what they want to take,” said Cleobury. “When it comes to commissioning composers I give them a free hand but I tell them it’s three and a half minutes for a range of voices. What you get depends on the composer. If it’s John Rutter it’s going to be a popular approach, if it’s Harrison Birtwistle, it’s at the sharp end of where music is today. But there is a place for all of it in our repertoire.” Birtwistle’s The Gleam included stamping feet and shouting.

This year’s commission is a first. Cleobury asked Huw Watkins, a 41-year-old Welshman, for a new Welsh carol. He has set to music a medieval Welsh text suggested by Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury and a Welsh speaker as well as master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Like Panufnik’s new carol, it is a cradle song.

The winner of the Bach Choir’s carol competition, 22-year-old composer Alex Woolf, has written Nowell, a narrative piece telling the story of Mary, from her vision of the Angel Gabriel to the birth of Jesus, to be sung for the first time on 22 December at the Cadogan Hall in London. The choir’s musical director, David Hill, described it as full of melody, rhythm and mood.

He estimates that between 200 and 300 new carols have been written this year. “It’s a burgeoning industry,” he said. “Leading choirs are inundated with offers. Writers know there’s an appetite for carols. You’ve got thousands of people attending services and concerts. People might not go to church at other times of year but they want to hear again the most famous story ever told.”