Tag Archives: Christmas

Minerva in festive mood with carols for the Donor reception

Minerva Voices, the upper-voices chamber choir, was in festive mood on Friday night, taking to the foyer-stage to add some seasonal musical lustre to the reception for University donors.

Donor_CarolsThe foyer-stage was strewn with flickering candles (and for the sake of everyone wondering about a predominantly wood-paneled building and flickering flames, I should reassure you that they were electrical candles…) and festive jumpers as members of Minerva filled the foyer with favourites from the fourth edition of Carols for Choirs, an incarnation of the enduringly-popular publication in arrangements for upper voices. There’s something particularly magical about hearing traditional carols in arrangements for sopranos and altos, an extra glimmer of frosted sparkle adorning customary repertoire.

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Our first sprinkling of Christmas music in Colyer-Fergusson added a touch of the festive spirit to the reception, and there was a call for a group photo round the departmental Christmas tree afterwards.

Next up, the Chamber Choir will be singing in the University Carol Service in the Cathedral next week. Thanks to Minerva Voices for getting Christmas underway!

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A contemporary Christmas: new anthology from Shorter House

It always feels like Christmas when new music lands on my desk, and doubly so this morning with the latest anthology from Shorter HouseSleep, Holy Babe.

Planning choral repertoire for the Christmas season, for me, begins in the summer, looking for repertoire for the University Carol Service in Canterbury Cathedral each December, and this year the Chamber Choir will be working from this collection of contemporary works, a rich anthology containing seasonal lullabies, carols, settings of the Magnificat, and Advent antiphons. The collection includes new setting of favourite seasonal texts, including Lullay my Liking and the Coventry Carol, and features both a cappella and accompanied pieces from a range of contemporary composers. There’s a great versatility to the set, which also includes pieces for upper-voice choir, which makes it particularly appealing – whilst you develop a clear programme for the choral year, it’s always useful to have scope for flexibility in case, as happened this year, the audition choir turns out to be upper-voices rather than SATB.

IMG_0120There’s also some really beautiful music contained in the collection, which I’m hoping will surprise anyone who tends to think that New Music means aggressive dissonance, irrational time-signatures, metric uncertainty and angular lines. These pieces are all singable – care has been taken by the composers to make the music easily performable – without compromising on an arresting musical language or sonorous colours.

Sleep, Holy Babe will be thrust into the hands of the newly-auditioned Chamber Choir in the autumn, and I’m very much looking forward to exploring these new landscapes in time for December. We’ll let you know how we get on…

Sweet singing in the Choir

When you are preoccupied with such issues as getting in place by the end of Once in Royal David’s City, processing without tripping up, juggling a folder of music and a lit candle without setting light to anything, and not letting your candle burn down to your fingers, then you know it can only be the annual University Carol Service.

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Minerva Voices waiting to process

WP_20151214_013Last night’s service, always a high-point of Kent’s cultural calendar, saw over a thousand people packing out Canterbury Cathedral, including the members of Minerva Voices, who performed several solo pieces as well as leading some ringing descants in the congregational hymns (which involved some serious planning over dinner betwtixt rehearsal and concert). The choir arrived in the Nave yesterday afternoon, to rehearse its repertoire, as well as to practice processing from the West Door down to the steps before the rood screen, and to get accustomed to singing in such a magnificent venue. Standing at the end of the Nave, you suddenly realise the volume of vaulted space that the Choir needs to fill with sound.

At 7.55pm, the Choir walked down the side aisle to take up position in front of the West Door; the Dean bid everyone welcome, the lights were extinguished, the first reading delivered, and then a sprightly rendition of Past Three A Clock blossomed into life to fill the expectant hush. Assistant conductor, third-year Joe Prescott, led a vivacious performance that set a joyous tone for the service. The congregation then stood, and that magical moment that really unwraps Christmas occurred; the solo opening verse of Once in Royal David’s City, in a ringing performance from second-year Music Scholar, Charlotte Webb, that soared to the Cathedral’s vaulted roof and rang clear around the Nave. The ensemble rose to match it in the second verse, before the third verse drew Choir, congregation and audience together, and we were off.

The mix of carols and readings also saw the Choir performing the Coventry Carol in a rendition that explored the piece’s melancholy and woe in significant detail; the final solo carol was a vigorous reading of the medieval Nowell Sing We Both All And Some, delivered with gusto in rousingly celebratory fashion.

WP_20151214_017The service closes with a candlelit communal performance of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and as the congregation departed, bearing their lit candles out into the night and into the mist-strewn city streets, you felt the reach of Christmas go with them. It’s a wonderful occasion, with so many of the University community coming together to hear anew the message of the season in words and music, to reflect on the tidings of the moment and to reach out to others. Now that really is the meaning of Christmas.

Minerva Voices is back in action next term when rehearsals begin anew on Vivaldi’s Gloria and an eclectic mix of repertoire for the Crypt concert in February. Meanwhile, season’s greetings to everyone!

Getting a Handel on Christmas: the Cecilian Choir back once more

Back in action again this year, the University Cecilian Choir has begun rehearsals ahead of its Christmas concert, which will launch December’s music-making in Colyer-Fergusson.

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A by-invitation choir formed from students, staff and alumni, the Cecilian Choir has sprung back to life over the past two weeks working on Part One of Handel’s Messiah for a Baroque Christmas concert that will also include instrumental works by Vivaldi. We’ve already been grappling with the tricky contrapuntal ideas so loved by Handel, as well as the bold homophony and harmonic landscape which gives the music such an invigorating quality. There’s still plenty of work to do, of course, but the Choir has made such a positive start – and it’s obvious that it takes the rehearsal process very seriously indeed…

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Find out more about A Baroque Christmas on Friday 4 December in Colyer-Fergusson Hall here. The journey towards Christmas has already begun…

Carol Service at the Cathedral

As I drove a few of the Chamber Choir back to campus last night, after the Chamber Choir had sung in the annual University Carol Service in Canterbury Cathedral, we were all reflecting on how fortunate we are to be involved with such an astonishing space. The University holds its annual degree ceremonies for its Canterbury students there, and as well as the carol service, we also hold the yearly Colyer-Fergusson concert each spring in the vast Cathedral Nave; the Chamber Choir also performs each spring in the Cathedral Crypt.

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Waiting at the West Doors to start the service

Last night’s Carol Service was the traditional celebration of the season, with carols, readings and reflections on the message of togetherness and reconciliation. As the Cathedral lights slowly went out at the start of the service, we were gathered at the West Doors clutching our lit candles; a moment, and then Matt began the service with Ord’s Adam Lay Y-Bounden, launched briskly into the vaulted heights. The congregation then stood, and soprano Emma’s clear soprano rang out over the assembly with the opening solo verse of Once in Royal, and we were underway.

The most challenging aspect of the rehearsal earlier in the afternoon had not been the musical content of the service, but how we should arrange ourselves in formation and process down the Nave in order to arrive on the altar-steps by the end of Once in Royal. Plus the consideration of in which hand to hold the candle, how fast we should leg it (er, I mean, process in dignified fashion!) during the carol in order to be in place by the last verse, and how not set light to our copies or the hair of the person in front. (”I’ve doused my hair in vast amounts of hairspray,” wailed Livy in the altos – ”I knew it was a mistake!”) Thankfully, there were no conflagrations, although we did make it into place on the altar steps with scant lines to spare…

On the altar-steps

On the altar-steps

As the service unfolded in words and music, there was the customary minefield that is singing Silent Night in a multitude of languages, a celebration of the University’s international community; Marek, one of the tenors, is Polish and was able to deliver the Polish verse with aplomb; alto Charley had diligently been working on the Japanese verse with one of her flat-mates; the rest of us grappled heroically with trying to fit the syllables of other languages to the well-known tune with mixed results. We stood to sing the evocative Gabriel’s Message and, later, a rousing account of Deck The Hall. At the end, all the congregation candles were re-lit for the final prayers, proclamations and hymn – the Nave became a sea of small flames dancing intimately to O Come, All Ye Faithful, before they were carried out of the Cathedral into the Close and beyond, out into the city.

Warming up in the North aisle before the service

Warming up in the North aisle before the service

A wonderful occasion to which everyone looks forward from the moment we meet for our first rehearsal each October; an opportunity to sing in one of the world’s greatest cathedrals, and to celebrate the season with music, with friends and with the University community.

Merry Christmas.

Bass Desires: a poem about choirs and Christmas

Drama graduate and bass in this year’s Chamber Choir, Dave Newell, reveals his bardic side in this reflection on the choral year and Christmas carol-learning.

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A Singer’s November

‘Twas two months before Christmas,
Under towers and spires,
Singers were bringing out
Carols for Choirs.

Their friends all had bonfires,
Guy Fawkes to remember.
But when you’re in a Choir,
Christmas starts in November.

“But Advent is ages away”
Their friends cry.
“You can’t yet sing Ding Dong
Merrily on High”

Then the singers will turn
Like a great wounded beast.
“Do you want Christmas
To be a musical feast?”

“Then we must take carol books
Down from the self,
‘Cos Christmas won’t sing
The damn carols itself.”

You look forward to Christmas
And I know that that’s true.
But remember the choirs
Get there much before you.

See for singers the year
Is two months ahead,
So do not be angry,
Think this way instead;

Lent in January,
All Saints in September,
Easter in February,
Christmas – November.

David Jonathan Newell

(See other views from the bass section in ‘Bass Desires’ under the category section to the right.)