Today’s window opens in France with L’adieu des bergers – The Shepherd’s Farewell, not as we might imagine, the shepherds taking their sheep back to the hills after visiting the new baby Jesus.
L’enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), Opus 25, is an oratorio by the French composer Hector Berlioz, based on the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, first performed on 10 December 1854, with Berlioz conducting. The second part of his sacred trilogy shows Mary, Joseph and Jesus setting out for Egypt to avoid the slaughter of the innocents, having been warned by angels.
And what a journey lay ahead with Jesus now a lively toddler, from Bethlehem to an unnamed location in Egypt. If they headed for the big city, Alexandria, it could be about 320 miles as the crow flies. On motorways this is a long journey with young children, even with the electronic entertainment modern parents install in their cars. What route Mary and Joseph followed we do not know, so it is likely the journey was longer than 320 miles and arduous.
The Gesualdo Six is a vocal consort formed in March 2014 . I first saw them on Facebook, actually I’ve only seen them on Facebook, but when they pop up it’s a lovely peaceful interlude amongst the other Facebook rubbish or the Christmas hype, or this year an escape from Covid and Brexit. Visit them on Facebook to see them singing a German Christmas Carol. The picture is of one of my favourite cathedrals, Lincoln, where one of the group was a choirboy. At the top of the city it looks wonderful illuminated for Christmas.
Today Elf is playing jack-in-a-box and has chosen to open the window and let in the snow. Fly away and escape 2020 with his favourite Christmas cartoon. Many of you will know this song well. The film became a Christmas tradition.
“Walking in the Air” was written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film of Raymond Briggs’ 1978 children’s book The Snowman; the fleeting adventures of a young boy and a snowman who has come to life. In the second part of the story, the boy and the snowman fly to the North Pole. “Walking in the Air” is the theme for the journey. This is the original recording of the song with Peter Auty, a choirboy from St. Paul’s Cathedral. His name was omitted from the original credits. He is now a fiftyish operatic tenor.
Today finds Elf in contemplative mood so the window opens in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge University; a place inextricably associated with Christmas. For over a hundred years A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols has been broadcast on the radio and more recently on television, from here to millions of people around the world.
Listen to one of my favourite composers and one of my favourite singers. Fantasia On Christmas Carols by Ralph Vaughan Williams, sung by Roderick Williams.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was a composer of great importance for English music. He was born on 12 October 1872 in a Cotswold village. At the turn of the century he was among the first to travel into the countryside to collect folk songs and carols from singers, notating them for future generations. He died on 26 August 1958; his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, near Purcell. In his long and very productive life music of every genre flowed in profusion.
Wiener Sängerknaben or Vienna Boys’ Choir is the world’s foremost children’s choral group. It is among the oldest of musical organizations, founded following an Imperial decree of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I on July 7, 1498; the Emperor wished boys’ voices to be added to the choir of the Imperial Chapel, or Hofkapelle. There are actually four choirs that tour the world, though Covid has put that on pause.
A frosty morning made Elf think of wintry things so he asked the boys to sing Sleigh Ride.
Over seventy years after Leroy Anderson created Sleigh Ride, the composition is still ranked as one of the 10 most popular pieces of Christmas music worldwide. Though the word “Christmas” is never mentioned in the lyrics, which Mitchell Parish wrote several years after Anderson finished the composition. Anderson ( 1908 – 1975 ) was an American composer of short, light concert pieces and his music is instantly familiar and sure to cheer us up, whether you want to dance to Belle of the Ball or write at speed to The Typewriter ( which gives me an idea for another blog! )
Sunday Smiles in today’s window and I hope this carol brings a smile. Sally at Smorgasbord featured it last year and though I knew the carol I had not heard this version and I kept playing it again. To enjoy to the full watch on the largest screen possible. My desktop has a television for a screen – no not a huge widescreen, but just about large enough to contain the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Carol of the Bells. And everything about this is big and joyful, it’s got everything. Many of us have missed singing in choirs or listening to them so I hope you enjoy this. Let us know if you have ever seen the Mormon Tabernacle Choir live, I wish I had been there.
Today’s window opens on a much brighter note on the other side of the world, with the picture from Western Australia taken by my sister; you can read her guest blog soon.
Carol of the Birds is an original Australian Christmas carol, released in 1948 as part of an original publication called Five Australian Carols; First Set. The music was written by William Garnet James and the lyrics by John Wheeler.
Warning – readers may find some scenes disturbing.
Some more melancholia today as we have a traditional carol that is far from the cosy nativity scene; do you know what it is really about?
The Coventry Carol is a 16th Century Christmas carol, performed as part of a Mystery Play depicting the birth of Jesus. The carol refers to the story of the ‘Slaughter of the Innocents’ in which King Herod ordered the mass murder of any child up to the age of two, after hearing of Jesus Christ’s birth. The song is a lullaby the women sing to their fallen children.
The Slaughter of the Innocents is rarely dwelt upon, certainly not in school nativity plays, but it is a tale that that would horrify any mother. I always feel the bible stories are lacking in back story and character development. As Mary and Joseph fled ( eventually ) into Egypt did they know what awful events they had unwittingly unleashed? A modern day reporter on the scene would have undoubtedly asked her ‘How did you feel, Mary?’
Herod the King, in his raging, Charged he hath this day; His men of might, in his own sight, All children young, to slay.
Then woe is me, poor Child, for Thee, And ever mourn and say; For Thy parting nor say nor sing, By-bye lully, lullay.
Here are two very different versions, the traditional tune and a different tune so we can include an angelic choir boy.
Christmas always has a touch of winter melancholy, especially this year and one of my favourite carols for enjoying a touch of melancholy is Bethlehem Down, made more interesting and poignant by the story behind it
Peter Warlock was the pseudonymn of Philip Heseltine (1894–1930), his choice of Warlock reflected his interest in occult practices! Bethlehem Down was created in a mood of flippancy due to the impecunious state of Warlock and his poet friend Bruce Blunt – both notorious for their Bohemian behaviour. They hoped to earn enough money to get suitably drunk at Christmas; the carol was completed in a few days and published (words and music) in The Daily Telegraph on Christmas Eve. Their plan had worked and they had ‘an immortal carouse on the proceeds’.
But Warlock’s career as a composer, music scholar and critic was cut short; towards the end of his life he became depressed by a loss of creative inspiration and died in his London flat of coal gas poisoning in 1930, probably suicide.
We’re in tears over tiers; only the Isle of Wight, The Scilly Isles and Cornwall are in Tier 1. From next Tuesday or is it Wednesday… many of us will continue being home alone. Four fifths of my family will be in Tier 3, including the new puppy, but as he’s not allowed beyond the back garden yet he probably is not bothered. For those of us in Tier Two the only difference from Lockdown Two is that all the shops are open, I think… In some ways it is a sort of Covid comfort blanket, no pressure to decide what to do or where to go next.
Christmas is still going to be a five day bubble of fun with three households allowed to meet as long as they keep all the windows open, don’t play board games and don’t hug Granny, but all that could change...
Theoretically it would have been better if everyone had stayed home for ever back in February and worn masks, even in the shower and if flights all over the world had been cancelled… We would have ended up with no food in the shops and worse still, no Amazon deliveries, but at least our leaders could not have been accused of being indecisive.
But what is life like in our new reality? My elderly next-door-but-one neighbour rang up the other evening; earlier when I walked past her house she was sitting in her porch with her granddaughter perched on a chair in the front garden, baby on her lap. I stopped to say hello at a safe distance, but her dog started barking ( the tiny dachshund barks at everyone that goes by ) , frightening the baby, who started crying… I waved apologetically and moved on. She was on the phone for over two hours, I was a bit punch drunk, but can’t complain I have no one to talk to and she makes me laugh. She was widowed when she was my age; half her family are nurses at our local hospitals and one of her sons works at the crematorium. Whatever the latest instructions Boris declares, her family have put her under lockdown. Her other son controls her central heating from his home in Malta.
On Tuesday my friend and I met at the beach hut in glorious sunshine. I can go to the shops ( the ones that are open ) or the cliff top and look at the horizon any time; I don’t feel closed in. On the promenade or up on Hengistbury Head it is like a permanent weekend or holiday time, everyone is out walking, jogging, cycling with dogs and children. Mostly they smile as they pass at a safe distance, glad to see people’s faces. Later in the afternoon when it is dark it is quite festive on the sea front; our resident four or five redundant ocean liners are fully lit up and circles of coloured light whiz past as invisible dogs run around with their flashing collars. Back at the shops the Christmas lights are up and windows are brightly lit with displays of what we cannot buy till next week.
But everywhere there will be people in tears over tiers, most of us confused with the constant changing of rules and information. Folk overworked and folk out of work. Parents going on social media to insist that though Johnny was off school sick, he tested negative for Covid and he wasn’t the cause of the whole of year seven having to stay home and isolate…
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 