12 Drummers Drumming Once More

 

      Friends, this past Wednesday I had the tremendous pleasure of singing a traditional British Christmas carol service with the University Chapel choir at the beautiful, ancient cathedral of St. Machar. I cannot find sufficient words to express not only the beauty of it, but all the emotion swirling in my head throughout the event. 

Music speaks a language too high and too complex to render comprehensive translation into the base tongues of men, and I trust that every musician reading this will know to what I am referring. The rest of you, I ask, to take it on faith. Suffice it to say, that while this begins the start of my annual Christmas carol blogposts, I feel as though I have been steeped very deeply in the Christmas carol world now for the past three weeks.

This is a wonderful thing, by the way!

Today marks the twelfth day to Christmas. I intended to begin yesterday and, as is my wont, make the twelfth day before Christmas, but alas, there really was no time. I say this with solemn honesty.

To kick off the series, I want to give a little insight into the practice of a typical choir here in the UK. By typical I do not mean the extremely prestigious ones such as the King's College Choir in Cambridge or the Cambridge Singers, nor do I refer to the local community choir, though there are plenty of those, and many of them are quite good. I am thinking of the multitude of cathedral, church, and chapel choirs maintained in the tradition of centuries past hundreds of beautiful stone buildings which for centuries have decorated British landscape, many since the days of King Harold and before. 

Friends, these choirs make American chorals look like wimps. I don't have any other way of saying it. I auditioned for the Chapel choir on a Saturday, received the letter of acceptance on Monday, rehearsed for the first time on Tuesday evening, rehearsed the other half of the repertoire on Wednesday afternoon and sang in the first service on Wednesday evening. 

No, we were not all in unison.

Yes, we sounded pretty good.

 No, nobody was panicking.

Yes, the music was new to most of us.

The fact is, as I suspected before I came here but could not confirm until I did, the people of the British isles are a singing people. They take incredible pride in their sight singing abilities, and many of my choir mates had been singing in choirs such as this since they were children, or in their early teens. 

You see, the only way you can pull off a stunt like the one I mentioned above, and have it sound good, is if almost every choir member not only is already fully functional in the world of choral music but already understands how to sing in a small ensemble such as this was. Every week for the past two and a half months we have been given new music on Monday during a one and a half hour rehearsal, gotten one more rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon by which time we were expected to know the music so we could focus on the polish and presentation, and then decked out in choir robes to sing evensong or chapel service on Wednesday evening. 

Every now and again a piece of music we were singing would be changed the day of and we'd have to learn something completely new which we'd be singing in just a couple of hours. Being a soprano didn't help one bit. As the highest voice, mine was one of those most exposed, and, as such, making a mistake was costly.

The first couple of weeks were difficult even with my ability to pick up melodies easily. I was forced to become a better musician and sight reader. However, as time went on and I did get better I discovered that what we were doing felt perfectly natural. Almost like something I ought to have been doing my entire life and hadn't been.

Since when did we decide to only use our voices together in harmony on a couple occasions every six months? Why has it become such a novelty when a few people can spontaneously break out into four part harmony, sometimes from memory, sometimes improvising? How did we, non-professional singers, decide to stop singing?

As you ponder these questions, I'll answer one which I'm sure you've been wanting to ask me since I started down this track: "What does this have to do with advent?"

Well, everything. Remember how I said earlier that music was a higher language? Why do you think the Psalms talk so much about praising God with singing, with musical instruments, with every voice? God doesn't command everyone who is musical to go hence and join a choir that sings for the public and usually for a fee every six months. He doesn't say that they can opt out if it's not the thing these days. In fact no one who has a voice gets a free pass. We are all commanded to sing, there is no distinction between the trained and the untrained singer, though, it would be interesting to see how many more people could actually sing well if everybody actually just sang more. What if singing were a way of life like reading, writing, mathematics, or cooking? What if you sang a song all the way through with no pretense every evening and every morning? What if you sang one three times a day before mealtime?

What if singing could be as natural as breathing? Imagine what this advent would be like if four random strangers standing in the queue at the checkout counter could break out into Angels We Have Heard on High in parts and sound good even though they'd never sung together before in their lives because singing was as natural to them as holding a conversation? 

What a Christmas season that would be!

I'm going to stop there, because I think you get the idea. It's about honor, worship, and using the abilities God gave us; the God of the universe who did not hesitate to take on humanity and become like a worm in order to save us. This God deserves more than a few trained singers in the Christmas eve service. He deserves the entire congregation, the whole world, lifting up its voice to blend in glorious harmony. 

Today's Christmas Carol is the lovely Swedish advent hymn, Prepare the Way O Zion. What if we all prepared the way for Him this Christmas by using our voices. I know your friends and family might hate me for saying this, but I'm going to say it: I don't care if the Chihuahua can sing better than you, sing anyway!

I, at least, will appreciate the effort, if that counts for anything, but most importantly you will be offering a sacrifice of praise to the Most High God who did the impossible for our sake. Let's prepare the way for Him with singing.

 

        Let us lift our praise abounding this Christmas tide. I should like to hear the whole world sing!

                   Happy Advent!

                  ~ Christianna