How shall I keep from singing?

Spent most of the weekend cuddling Grandchorister and singing nursery rhymes rather than church anthems. But did sit with her on my lap throughout the Parish Eucharist at Llandaff Cathedral. She loved all the hymns, psalm and Mass setting, but cried during ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ – a true grandchild of her grandfather, who hates that carol with a vengeance.

A cold day today – the church didn’t really warm up all morning. Fortunately, for the baby being baptised, we don’t do total immersion (at least not in the winter). She seemed fascinated by the water and would have happily been baptised twice, if she had been allowed. ‘Spirit of the Lord, come down’ (Harper) was a fitting anthem, both for the baptism of a baby and also the baptism of Christ, which we were celebrating today.

The three kings managed to arrive at the crib this morning, without getting lost on the way, or broken. The many references to stars, kings, rising of suns and eastern promise made sure that only someone both very hard of hearing and poor of sight would have failed to notice that we were celebrating the Epiphany today. In contrast to all the pageantry, we were asked to sing a very simple Taize chant as the anthem today: ‘In the Lord I’ll be ever thankful’, unison, S with ATB hum, SATB. Next time we might add the Cantor part for added effect.

A splendid lunch of homemade vegetable soup and apricot galettes awaited us after the morning service, made by one of our choir members, assisted by other church members. Fortunately, we had a few hours to digest the firsts, seconds (and even, for the hardy, thirds) before we had to sing again.

Another Festival Evensong tonight – the congregation will be getting bored soon – this time with rather stronger voices in all parts. The Sweeney responses, Moeran in D, and ‘From the Rising of the Sun’ (Gore Ouseley) were sung with confidence and enjoyment.

Obviously, church members do not celebrate New Year’s Eve in wild fashion (or else they are extremely hardy folk) as there were not many people missing at 09.45 for the Jan.1st Sunday Eucharist. A smaller than usual choir (can you spot the party goers?) sang ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ (Mozart), before a rousing voluntary (‘Nun Danket Alle Gott’, Karg-Elert), from our favourite deputy organist, sent us on our way.

Fortunately, more choristers emerged for the Festival Evensong, plus the Director of Music (fully recovered, one assumes, from his family visitations and New Year festivities) and a visiting soprano all the way from Down Under (the fame of our choir spreads far and wide ; ) ). This joyful band of singers, plus the priest-in-charge on Alto, started the new year off in style with Brewer in D canticles and Rutter’s ‘God be in my head’. Some rough voices (whatever had we all been imbibing over the Christmas period?) meant that we sang to organ accompaniment, rather than a capella, for safety’s sake. We’ll all have to go home and gargle with a 5-day supply of Tixylix before next Friday’s choir practice.

Singing at the Hospital on Christmas Eve is always fun, even when we have to negotiate the modernised (non-gender-specific) Bethlehem carol sheet. The vicar enjoyed the ensuing hilarity when we sang ‘Good King Wenceslas’ with the high voices singing the low voice parts, and vice versa. Ya boo sucks to Mary Daly, et al.

Midnight Mass had another capacity crowd (the church still dining out on the total of 550 plus several sheep and a donkey at the crib service) and no (obvious) awkward incidents – perhaps due to our rendition of ‘Silent Night’ (arr. Sweeney) keeping them all subdued.

I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people of all ages at the Christmas Morning Service – usually the quietest one of all. Fortunately, the tent in the chancel was for a sermon illustration, not an Occupy Protest. The choir children managed to stop stuffing themselves with sweets long enough to sing ‘Away in A Manger’ and then ate the remaining ones in the vestry before going home for lunch. Well it is Christmas, after all.

The Festival of Lessons and Carols always starts Christmas off for me, even though these days we have alternative readings, from Luke and Titus (no more ‘In the beginning was the word’, etc.). The chancel had only plain candles and I didn’t spot any flammable incidents with the greenery around the nave candles this year.

There was hardly any room for the choir to stand at the back of the church for the solo first verse of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, as over 500 people were packed into the pews and additional chairs brought in for the occasion.

As well as a selection of traditional congregational carols, the choir sang ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ (arr. Willcocks), ‘A Maiden most Gentle’ (arr. Carter), ‘Nativity Carol (Rutter), ‘Silent Night’ (arr. Sweeney) and ‘Shepherd’s Pipe Carol’ (Rutter). We ended with the Rutter arrangement of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, which is hammed up as much as possible, and drew delighted applause from the congregation (something choirs very rarely experience in a church service). Applause was once again freely given at the end of the voluntary (‘Von Himmel Hoch,’ Garth Edmundson), by our guest organist for the evening.

All Ruttered out, we then proceeded to demolish some delicious chocolate tray bakes provided by one of our altos, who well understands that we need serious sustenance after special occasions.

New baby Grandchorister arrived bang on time, right at the start of the Eucharist. She’s getting in practice already, it would seem.
I think the rest of the choir sang ‘People look East’, but I was busy looking North at the time, travelling in the direction of the new arrival.

I’ve not enjoyed the taste of the communion wine for a long while now, and today had a particularly strong reaction to it, with a horrible taste in my mouth for hours afterwards. Perhaps God won’t mind too much if I take communion in only one kind from now on – after all he didn’t appear to mind too much when swine flu was around.

The music today, however, sounded particularly fine, with confident leads and sustained phrasing. It must have been the influence of our new soprano, who has cheered us all up by her presence. During the administration, we sang ‘Wachet Auf’ (Bach) in harmony, a capella; the middle verse sung by the sopranos with ATB humming.

Today is the last day of singing surrounded by 50+ Christmas Trees, all lit up and twinkling, as the town’s Christmas Tree Festival comes to an end. I fear the 3rd Sunday of Advent may appear rather dull by comparison.

One of the teeniest Vestry Group children climbed up into the pulpit to light the first advent candle. This was a huge reminder to the organist who quite forgot he was supposed to be playing the Kyrie and launched into the Gloria instead. ‘This is the truth sent from above’ (arr. Vaughan Willams) was sung unaccompanied, and we processed out to ‘Wachet Auf’ (Bach), by which time the organist had fully woken up!

One of my most favourite services of the year, the Advent Carol Service, took place amidst over 50 lit and decorated Christmas Trees and a church full of people. We did Advent-lite this year, not having had much time to practise, with only five choral items (plainsong Advent response, The Lord at first did Adam make, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, The Angel Gabriel, People look East), but people sounded satisfied enough as they gave positive feedback over the post-service mince pies and mulled wine.

Two contrasting services at Llandaff cathedral this weekend. Firstly, the obscenely early Parish Eucharist (9 am start), with a surprising number of young children in attendance. I liked the (unnamed) Mass setting, easy for a congregation to follow, with the music printed in the service sheet for those (like me) who didn’t already know it. Being ‘Christ the King’ Sunday, the hymns were all well known: ‘Crown him with many crowns’, ‘Praise my soul the King of Heaven’, ‘Christ is the King, let earth rejoice’. Also, being ‘Stir up’ Sunday, we had the Christmas Pudding prayer and ‘Wachet Auf’ (Bach) as the Voluntary (on their still-new, very fine organ). The parish choir were capable enough for an undemanding repertoire, with a mixed, young, top line and a small number of adult part singers.

At evensong, the Cathedral choir made a very pleasing sound – Murrill in E canticles and ‘Greater love hath no man’ (Ireland), one of my favourite anthems and so appropriate for this time of year. I’m sure the voluntary by Langlais also sounded fine (for those who like Langlais) but, having a long journey home in the dark, we didn’t stay to listen.