It’s Chriiiiiiiist-maaaaaas! Well, nearly. And Oriana are into our annual Christmas concert rehearsal melee. Christmas, in the immortal words of Sir Cliff, is a time for living, a time for believing, a time for realising that we’re singing a LOT of music and we don’t really know it that well. Ooooh, mistletoe and wine. We always seem to pull it out of the bag in the end, though, and the audience get to roar along with a few carols while the choir try and put them off by harmonising in different keys and occasionally bursting into a different carol altogether, so it is always a fun and interactive experience.
However, one thing that always worries me about Christmas is the way it reveals my populist musical bent. Everyone else loves singing In Dulci Jubilo and frightening things in 13/8 by Russian men in horn-rimmed glasses, but for me its “Frosty the Snowman” and Giles Swayne’s “Starlight” every time (“People of planet Earth, hear what I say!”). Try as I might to raise a sardonic eyebrow as we belt out “We’re sending a message by Starliiiiiight, and the message is Luuurrrrrrrrve”, I can’t help but grin widely and dance a little bit.
So you can imagine my despair when I was looking up “In the Bleak Midwinter” for blogging purposes, and came across the following list of Best Carols of All Time, as voted for by assorted respectable musicians and choirmasters. They are thus:
1) In the Bleak Midwinter
2. In Dulci Jubilo (See? Told you)
3. A Spotless Rose
4. Bethlehem Down
5. Lully, Lulla
6. Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day
7. There is No Rose
8. O Come All Ye Faithful
9. Of the Father's Heart Begotten
10. What Sweeter Music
Cough, excuse me? What? No Hark the Herald Angels? No Little Donkey? No …. (sob) … Starlight? Admittedly Bethlehem Down and Lully Lulla are nice pieces, but they’re not exactly the kind of thing Santa would burst out of the chimney to, are they? And what’s all this stuff about roses?? Where’s the holly and the ivy? This is Christmas with the Christmas taken out of it, as though sleighbells and chocolate and happy songs about snow are beneath our musical intellect.
However, even these stuffed shirts pale into insignificance next to “Hymnologist and theologian Ian Bradley” who according to Wikipedia has questioned the theology of “In the Bleak Midwinter” thusly:
"Is it right to say that heaven cannot hold God, nor the earth sustain, and what about heaven and earth fleeing away when he comes to reign?"
What?????? It’s a Christmas carol, not a PhD thesis in bible studies. Similarly can it be right to exhort the hooved and probably tone-deaf Little Donkey to “ring out those bells tonight”?*. Is it correct form to expect Jesus to arrive on no less than three sailing ships on Christmas Day? Of course it isn’t, but what’s wrong with a bit of festive licence? Honestly, when did Christmas become the time of pernickety fuss-budgets? (Try rhyming that, Sir Cliff)
Well if you can’t beat them, join them. I typed intellectual Christmas carols into Google, and would like to announce that my new favourite Christmas Carol is “Listen, the celestial messengers produce harmonious vocalization”. We may not be singing this at the Oriana Christmas concert, but we will be regaling you with “Embellish the Interior Passageways”, “The first person nominative plural of a triumvirate of far eastern heads of state”, and happily, “Obese personification fabricated from compressed mounds of crystalline structures”**. Bet you can hardly wait now.
*If Simon Funnell points out that it’s actually Bethlehem and not the donkey that is supposed to ring the bells, you will be ruining my favourite and most enduring Christmas image and therefore getting your name on the Fuss-budget List.
**With thanks to Christmas Songs for the Intellectual” http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/8965/newsonga.htm
Tuesday 29 November 2011
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