A.S.H. Smyth

Spare a thought for us choral singers during carol season

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and I’m sure you’re all looking forward to a damn fine sing-along at your respective local carol services.

Spare a thought, though, at this time of year, for the pros and semi-pros who will, like as not, be charged to fine-tune the outpourings of your festive cheer. For the great majority of choral singers, the 24(ish) days of Advent are, more than anything else, a matter of counting down just how many services are left before a day off in what is bloody nearly January.

Singers do enjoy the Christmas repertoire: of course we do. But Advent hadn’t even started when I set out for the first of four musical engagements in one 24-hour window. By the end of Sunday I’d sung ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ three times. And ‘Lo, he comes’ at least twice. Likewise, the whole set of Advent antiphons. And the Advent litany. (Forlorn stats, what’s more, that do not include rehearsal run-throughs.)

I’m already booked in for at least another dozen gigs between – what’s today? – the 7th and (so far) the evening of the 22nd. A whole variety of chapel services, a parish church or two, a choral society, a military regiment, a couple of pubs, and even a little something for the BBC. I’m even volunteering (sorry, comrades) at the service of a livery company.

And I’ve got it easy. One of my mates – I kid you not – has already done 12 carol-related performances, and has a further 26 to go. Another recorded his choir’s Christmas album back in June.

The problem, alas, is not actually the choral music. We can handle that. It’s, um, the congregational numbers. The compulsory standards. The bellowy crowd-pleasers. Quite a few events – the more ‘fun’ (unpaid) ones – consist of almost nothing but this stuff.

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Written by
A.S.H. Smyth
A.S.H Smyth is a journalist and radio presenter in the Falkland Islands. He was once selected to play cricket for the national side but couldn’t make it.

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