All I want for Christmas is variety.

Some thoughts on Christmas music.

There was a time when Christmas started on the first of December. You knew Christmas was coming by the TV adverts: Harvey’s Bristol Cream (the best sherry in the world), the latest must-have accessory from Ronco (a travel iron one year, a buttoneer the next) or the Woolworths’ Christmas. Coming on the first of the month, one had just over three weeks to get excited before the day itself arrived. One marked off those days with the help of an advent calendar: either a Father Christmas, whose arms and legs moved when you pulled a cord, or a nativity scene. Whichever you had, each morning began by carefully opening a little door to reveal a picture. These days, Christmas starts shortly before Hallowe’en, when Santa rubs shoulders with the latest gruesome witch or monster model. Advent calendars might, if you’re lucky, feature a snowy scene but are more likely to be decidedly un-Christmassy. The little picture behind a door (oh how dull!) is now replaced by a chocolate or other treat – a candle or a piece of make-up.  Such is progress.

When I started my current job, there was great excitement on the 30th of November as December was almost here. The next day, a Christmas radio station was switched on with a sense of real joy. During the course of the day, we heard about eight different Christmas songs, some of them three times. The same selection was recycled each day until, on the third day, we needed a break. The next year, I offered a Christmas playlist that I had compiled. The obvious Christmas belters (Noddy Holder, Mariah Carey), some older offerings (White Christmas, Happy Holidays) and even a few carols. This cut back on the repetition a bit and offered considerably more variety. I was surprised, when we talked about Christmas music, to find that my younger colleagues were not familiar with some Christmas standards that I had made a point of teaching to my pupils in my teaching days. Indeed, a reference to ‘God rest you, merry gentlemen’ was received with blank looks. I also find that more and more people confess to not knowing much about the Christmas story beyond it being about “Jesus being born”.

This is probably not too surprising. Church attendance is in decline and has been for many a year. Schools are less likely to deliver a religious Christmas at a time when diversity and inclusion are prized. Singing is less common in many schools now. As a result, Christmas has got bigger but less meaningful – it lasts longer but represents less. In this respect, it is probably going back to its roots as a mid-Winter festival marked by extended eating and drinking (not in themselves a bad thing). I am sometimes classed as a Grinch for railing against the modern Christmas (a grinch, mind, not a Scrooge – how many people have actually read Dickens’s wonderful story?). May I be very clear - I am absolutely not grinchy or Scroogey – I genuinely love Christmas, but I can’t help but feel that some of the magic has gone. Whether or not one believes in the Christmas story (and, as an agnostic, I don’t) there is a wonder and mystery to the story of the nativity (and to Scrooge’s eventful Christmas Eve and subsequent redemption) that has been lost in a sea of commercialism. In the process, much that was wonderful has been lost and, more to my point, much music goes unheard and forgotten.

Which brings me to the point of this blog – what Christmas music actually is. What do you listen to at Christmas? Do you have a favourite album of carols which gets played as you hang the decorations? Do you, like me, put aside time on Christmas Eve, to savour ‘Carols from Kings’? Like my colleagues, I look forward to putting on Christmas music when December arrives (or more likely, on the first Sunday of Advent), but my idea of Christmas music is somewhat different and much more varied. Indeed, I could happily play a different Christmas album every day up to Christmas without repeating a single one. I have albums and playlists for different times of the day, for hanging the decorations, making the stuffing, and just being out and about. However much I’m tempted to start playing them in November, I deprive myself until the start of the season so that I can appreciate them at the ‘right’ time. There was a time when I would buy a new Christmas album every year, but I tend to stream music now, so that tradition has been lost. But streaming does offer the advantage of giving access to a vast amount of music and my listening may well have broadened as a result. I would like to make some suggestions for your Christmas listening. If you sing in a choir, some of these suggestions will already be familiar to you. Hopefully, some will be new. Do give my playlist a try (helpful links are at the bottom).

It’s worth considering the many forms that Christmas music can take. To start with, let’s think about carols. I’m not thinking, for the moment, about the big carols with soaring descants that we might sing along with in churches or cathedrals – the ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ or ‘O Come, all ye faithful’ carols. I’m thinking about the folk-based carols that date back hundreds of years. A carol was, originally, a dance. Consequently, many of these Christmas carols are much lighter than the Victorian ones (such as Hark! The Herald) and have a skipping rhythm. For example, ‘The holly and the ivy’ or ‘The Sussex Carol’ (“on Christmas night all Christians sing”). One could easily dance to these melodies (and even more easily after a glass of mulled wine). These carols would be sung at all manner of social gatherings but, because many were not written down for many years, melodies might be forgotten and familiar tunes substituted. Most people are familiar with the setting of ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’ whose tune (known as Winchester Old) dates from the 1500’s. But there are many other settings, including one to the tune ‘On Ilkley moor baht ‘at’, some of which are still regularly sung.  Unfortunately, many of these carols are often sung at a slower pace than intended and can feel more like a dirge than a dance. (As an occasional organist, I firmly believe that one sometimes has a responsibility to bully the congregation into singing more quickly for the sake of the music!)

In light of this, my first recommendation for your Christmas listening is for an album helpfully called ‘The Carol Album’ which was released in 1989 and, as I remember it, was a real ear-opener to many people, including myself. The conductor Andrew Parrott compiled a wonderful programme of Christmas music from across seven centuries. Carols that one may know well are heard anew in old or folk settings. God rest you, merry gentlemen here casts off its Victorian greatcoat (and the horribly slow tempo at which it is often sung) and dons the clothing of country villagers in full flow. Similarly, Silent Night throws off the glowing choral sound of cathedral choirs and goes back to its German roots, sung in German by two singers to a simple guitar accompaniment. The whole album is joyfully unstuffy and invigorating. (See the link at the end of the blog to listen to this on YouTube).

At this point I should say that, within each ‘type’ of Christmas music that I’m identifying, it’s possible to group pieces under a number of headings (which is something I do when creating playlists or concert programmes): first, music for the nativity: the sort of pieces that transport you back two thousand years to the light of a star or a candle and to the time of shepherds and kings. Secondly - music that evokes a snowy field or street – a scene one might find in the writings of Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy. Finally, music for a Christmas party – all clinking glasses, tinsel and family gatherings. All of these work on their own terms and one can create a perfectly satisfying programme from any one. But a healthy balance of all three is even better!

If the first type was music for the common people, the second is music for worship, either in churches or cathedrals. This group includes music from many centuries past, starting with plainchant. One of the better-known chants is Hodie, Christus natus est (this day, Christ is born). Many of the great Renaissance composers created motets or masses for the Christmas season, setting texts such as O magnum mysterium (o great mystery) and Verbum caro factum est (the word made flesh). On a larger scale is the Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach, whose six parts should each be sung on a particular feast day over the Christmas period or the Christmas Story by Heinrich Schultz, both intended to be performed during a service.

Around the Victorian era, composers began to set Christmas words to tunes for congregational use. I’ve already mentioned Hark! The Herald angels sing, with its memorable tune by Felix Mendelssohn. A personal favourite of mine is ‘It came upon the midnight clear’, with its bracing melody by Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). More popular still is Holst’s setting of ‘In the bleak midwinter’ although choirs often prefer to sing a later setting by Harold Darke. Fortunately, you can listen to either and decide which appeals most to you. Not all of these carols were intended for congregational use though as many composers wrote specifically for choirs, almost like a concert piece. Vaughan Williams made some beautiful arrangements of carols for choirs (including ‘The truth from above’ and ‘Wither’s Rocking Hymn’). A major contributor to the Christmas choral repertoire was Philip Heseltine, a music critic and writer better known by his pseudonym: Peter Warlock. Warlock was an extraordinary character – narcissistic, waspish and hedonistic, as likely to be riding naked around Somerset on his motorbike as to be composing carols! He did create some wonderful music, though, including the much-loved and very atmospheric ‘Bethlehem Down’. This was submitted to The Daily Telegraph’s annual carol competition, winning first place. Warlock put the winnings towards ‘’an immortal carouse’’. This haunting carol juxtaposes Mary’s hopes for her son (‘’When he is king, they will give him the king’s gifts: myrrh for its sweetness and gold for a crown’’) with his eventual fate (‘’when he is king, they will clothe him in grave-sheets, myrrh for embalming and wood for a crown’’). This bitter sweetness is found in many carols.

From the large scale works for worship grew large scale works for performance in their own right: what you might think of as Christmas concert pieces.  Surely the most popular of these is Handel’s Messiah, which covers not only the prophecy of the coming of Christ and the nativity, but also covers not the suffering of Christ and the Day of Judgement. Its scope notwithstanding, Messiah remains popular at Christmas and is full of memorable numbers, which is extraordinary given the speed at which it was composed.

Not all composers were as successful as Handel in their efforts to tell the story of Christ’s life. Franz Liszt’s epic Christus takes around three hours to perform but is seldom heard. Not quite so long (but long enough) is Vaughan Williams’s Hodie, a cantata which tells the Christmas story using texts by various poets. Much though I love Vaughan Williams, I can’t say this is a favourite piece of mine, I find it overlong and rather forgettable. His Fantasia on Christmas Carols is, on the other hand, an absolutely wonderful piece. This is a medley of carols (some familiar and some in an unfamiliar form) woven seamlessly together to create what is, to my ears, a wonderfully atmospheric work that is an indispensable part of my Christmas buildup. If you have never heard this before, I do urge you to try it out.

One of my set works for O-Level music was Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. This is a lovely collection of original carols for upper voices (usually boys) accompanied by a harp. Most of the texts are from the 16th and 17th centuries. The collection is bookended by a plainchant – Hodie, Christus natus est (this day, Christ is born) sung first as a processional and finally as a recessional. This tune is marvellously exploited by Britten in a solo for the harp which provides an interlude midway through. The settings are varied in mood and include the beautiful lullaby Balulalow,  the fiendishly brilliant This little babe (actually a very simple composition but very hard to perform) and the chilly In freezing winter’s night  in which the harp seems to shiver with cold. This is a very pleasant way to spend 25 minutes. If coming to the work for the first time, I would recommend having the texts in front of you – there are some old English phrases within that . I am looking forward to attending my first ever live performance of this at Winchester Cathedral this year.

Having talked about folk music, music for the church and for the concert hall, I find I’ve come full circle to end up with more music for the people, or popular music. You can take this to include anyone from Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Paul McCartney to Wizard, Slade and Mariah Carey. My first thought was that there is a big difference between this and the folk pieces I referred to earlier which were created and performed by the masses, whereas modern pop Christmas music is to be listened to by the masses. But I think I’ve changed my mind, as so many people will sing along to their favourite Christmas songs at parties.  There’s still a difference but perhaps not so great. I am sure, though, that there is a difference in my response to Christmas pop music which is that it is about personal significance rather than personal preference. If, for example, I listen to A Spotless Rose by Herbert Howells, I do so because I enjoy it on a musical level. Down in yon forest somehow transports me to a snowy woodland. But Slade’s love-it-or-loathe-it Merry Christmas Everybody immediately triggers (for me) a memory of the kitchen in the house where I grew up and where the radio played from morning until dinner time. Johnny Mathis’s radiant (or cheesy, depending on your taste) When a child is born takes me back to a Christmas bazaar in the basement of our local church,  all fairy lights, stalls and a very recognizable Santa. For this reason, Christmas pop music is an essential part of the season for me, as the songs have an association with my past. I just don’t want them on a loop for four weeks. Apart from the two songs I just mentioned, I have a particular fondness for Greg Lake’s I believe in Father Christmas, with its clever use of Prokofiev’s Troika from Lieutenant Kije and Chris De Burgh’s A Spaceman came traveling, which reimagines Jesus as a peace envoy from outer space.

Whatever your preference, be it for Buble or Britten, for Wizard or Peter Warlock, a carol about the first Christmas or Wham’s Last Christmas, I hope you might be inspired to try something different this year. I suppose the playlist accompanying this blog is largely frostbound and candlelit, but I think it will go nicely with a hot drink and chair by the fire (or by your Christmas tree). I won’t be holding out hope for a white Christmas, neither do I wish it could be Christmas every day. But, in the words of Greg Lake’s wonderful song: ‘’ I wish you a hopeful Christmas, I wish you a brave new year! All anguish, pain and sadness leave your heart and let your road be clear.’’ Merry Christmas!

A podcast of this blog can be heard here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4L9H7lC44CwuVNJmmkDh2h?si=fb9fe914e0cf4754

A playlist with some of the music discussed about can be found here:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/04IV1wvu6HAJzaasO6Ozt3?si=VIdBa7MbRWCXHeBap5Xkyg

Andrew Parrott's "A Carol Album" can be heard here:

https://youtu.be/892AsEfX1Gc?si=fXfqtOkHx1kbdwPb