Chanticleer’s annual Christmas concert is one of my favorite holiday treats and — lucky for me — Craig also enjoys this event. (If you don’t know, Chanticleer is a fantastic 12-voice men’s choir, based in San Francisco.) After so many years, we know the structure of their Christmas program by heart. The concert begins in silence and darkness; then one clear voice begins a Gregorian chant:

Hodie Christus natus est!
Hodie Salvator apparuit!

Other voices join in perfect unison, and gradually the singers process in, carrying candles, and form a semicircle in the front of the church. The chant over, they break into a motet — often a setting of the same chant. Then they blow out their candles in unison, the lights come up, and the concert begins in earnest.

The program always starts with more “serious” music, mostly the works of either Renaissance or contemporary composers. The second half is lighter, featuring settings of familiar carols, a gospel medley, and their signature piece, Franz Biebl’s gorgeous Ave Maria. I don’t think Chanticleer would be permitted to escape the church without performing this last, it’s so beloved.

Craig and I enjoy the concert in rather different ways. I listen very carefully to all the pieces, following the lyrics and translations in my program and trying to make sense of the words. I want to be present, to fully appreciate what I’m hearing: following the text helps to anchor my attention. Many of the pieces are familiar to me from my many years of choral singing, and I instantly prick up my ears at the sound of something I know. I follow the rise and fall of the music, humming along in my head (unlike my dad, who used to hum audibly at these concerts!). Craig, who sometimes enjoys the first half of the program mainly for its soporific effects, also perks up when he hears something he knows. (I imagine this is true of most of us — which is why touring musicians are always obliged to trot out the old chestnuts.)

There is something magical about the crystalline purity of Chanticleer’s Christmas concert. This music speaks of something beyond ourselves, far from the cares of this weary world. It offers a glimpse of the infinite — exquisite and transcendent. And at the same time, it describes the most human of experiences: the birth of a child, wonder and excitement at this everyday miracle, the hope of redemption and peace. I always leave feeling uplifted and thankful.

Christmas music, curated

I get very tired of the bubblegum Christmas soundtracks that are so hard to avoid in this season. On the other hand, I love listening to my own collection of holiday music, which I don’t allow myself to indulge in any other time of year. But from Thanksgiving to the New Year, it’s Pink Martini’s Joy to the World, Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, The Nutcracker, George Winston’s December, a perfect orgy of a cappella (Chanticleer, Home Free, Peter Hollens…), and much more.

• One of my very favorites is the Pentatonix version of “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” Backed by a gospel choir, this is about the most joyful and uplifting celebration of the season I can imagine. If you’re not one of the 24 million people who has already viewed their YouTube video, check it out now. And don’t forget your dancin’ shoes— you’re gonna need ’em!
• Two new additions to my holiday collection this December are A Joey Alexander Christmas (Joey is a 15-year-old jazz piano prodigy from Bali, of all unlikely places, and he’s amazing) and Colorado-based Face Vocal Band’s I Hear the Bells. 
• A longtime favorite is The Ancient Music of Christmas, by Ethan James, which features the hurdy-gurdy. (Ethan was a versatile musician and producer — and my one-time partner — who passed away in 2003.) These haunting melodies are the perfect antidote to one-too-many renditions of “Santa Baby” — and you can even buy the album on Amazon!

Troll the ancient Yuletide carols!

I love singing Christmas carols. And I always especially loved singing carols with my family. When I was growing up, we often sang together — usually in the car or while doing the dishes. Christmas carols broadened our repertoire for a few weeks each year, beginning with the washing-up after Thanksgiving dinner. That always kicked off the holiday season for me. Then throughout December, we would frequently sing a carol instead of a regular blessing before dinner. (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” was usually the selection, though “Joy to the World” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful” also found their way into the rotation.)

My dad loved to sing, and his singing was the core around which our family music formed. In the last months of his life, one of the things Dad still responded to was Christmas carols. So even though he passed away in June, we sang “O Come, All Ye Faithful” at his memorial service — and it was perfect. As I recall, we also sang a few carols when we buried his ashes, together with our mom’s, the following summer. Now that both our parents are gone, my sisters and I sing together only very rarely — but I’m hoping we will manage a few carols when we meet on Christmas Day.

At some point in my younger life, I decided to learn all the verses of my favorite Christmas carols. (Confession: I beguiled the tedium of many a long sermon by poring over my hymnal.) I especially love the melodies of some of the less familiar carols — like “In the Bleak Midwinter” (lyrics by Christina Rosetti; melody by Gustav Holst), “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (with moving lyrics written during the Civil War by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” and “O Come, Emmanuel” (which is technically an Advent song, rather than a Christmas carol).

As a result of my “studies,” I discovered that I prefer the later verses of many carols to their more familiar first verses. For example, here’s the final verse of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”:

O ye beneath life’s crushing load,
whose heads are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with heavy steps and slow:
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing. 
Oh, rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing!

Lovely, right? And how about:

O come, Desire of Nations, bind
all peoples in one heart and mind.
Bid envy, strife, and discord cease.
Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.
Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Or even:

Fast away the old year passes. Fa la la la la la la la la!
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses. Fa la la…
Sing we joyous all together. Fa la la…
Heedless of the wind and weather. Fa la la…

Long stored in the attic of my brain, these lyrics come back to me with surprising ease — which means that I’m usually the only one singing through to the very end of any carol. Now, Craig and I sometimes sing carols in the car — or, rather, I sing (because, of course, I know all the words) and he “ho-ho-hos” and “ha-ha-has” out a counterpoint, which always makes me laugh with delight! Craig is awesome.

A Christmas carol in Wales

Dylan Thomas’ A Child Christmas in Wales (1950) is a prose piece, a loosely-strung series of recollections written in the poet’s rich and evocative language. Near the end is this memory of caroling with a group of other boys on a very dark December night:

And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn’t the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. “What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?”

“No,” Jack said, “Good King Wencelas. I’ll count three.” One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen… And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

“Perhaps it was a ghost,” Jim said.

“Perhaps it was trolls,” Dan said, who was always reading.

“Let’s go in and see if there’s any jelly left,” Jack said. And we did that.

If you haven’t listened to Thomas’ 1952 reading of these wonderful reminiscences, I encourage you to check it out.

With gratitude for the many musics of Christmas:
Sing in exultation!

Connections

• Rooster photo reference: Gallus gallus / Gallo by Gabriel Chalmeta on 500px.com
• Listen to Chanticleer sing Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria (on YouTube — looks terrible but sounds great) or buy their wonderful Christmas album, Our Heart’s Joy, which includes this piece. Also check out their arrangement of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (YouTube)
• Pink Martini: Joy to the World (“This is rich, hugely approachable music, utterly cosmopolitan yet utterly unpretentious,” says The Washington Post — and I agree!)
• I think it was my sister Kristi who introduced me to Home Free through their gorgeous version of “Angels We Have Heard on High” (on YouTube). They won Season 4 of The Sing Off, and their videos are a lot of fun — even the otherwise rather awful Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (watch what happens when carol-singing crosses over into home invasion).
• Peter Hollens: A Hollens Family Christmas
• Pentatonix on YouTube: “O Come, All Ye Faithful“
• Also, check out Pentatonix’s version of “Mary, Did You Know?” It’s not really a new song, but it was new to me when I made this postcard a couple of years ago. The Madonna and Child in a Landscape that forms part of this collage is by Giovanni Battista Cima (also called Cima da Conegliano), and it’s one of several very similar paintings he did of this subject. Craig and I saw it at a terrific exhibit on “The Glories of the Venetian Renaissance” at the Denver Museum of Art, where I took this photo.
• Adding a link to some glorious Christmas a cappella by the Finnish vocal quintet Club for Five: “Sydämeeni joulun teen” (which Google translates as something along the lines of “My Heart is/for/in Christmas”). This is truly crystalline perfection — and a beautiful video! Thanks to my friend Rudy for the link. (Also check out the Swedish fire log — a.k.a. Swedish torch or Canadian candle — featured in the video. That’s something I’ve never seen before.)
• Wikipedia: Ethan James — and get The Ancient Music of Christmas on Amazon.
• Face Vocal Band: Check out their album I Hear the Bells and the title track on YouTube
• Joey Alexander (Wikipedia) and A Joey Alexander Christmas (YouTube)
• Dylan Thomas: A Child’s Christmas in Wales — listen to the poet read his story aloud (totally great!) or read the full text yourself or do both! Actually, the language is dense, so I find it helpful to follow along with the text as I listen.
• Also of interest on this general topic:
  • Encyclopedia Britannica: Carol
  • BBC Culture: The surprising origins of famous Christmas carols
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour: We Celebrate Our Favorite Christmas Songs (These are mostly songs I don’t much like, but this crew is always worth a listen.)

You might also enjoy…

• The great Christmas tree hunt