A CEREMONY OF CAROLS
The Christmas carol service is usually the pinnacle of Michaelmas choral efforts . Year upon year , a myriad of school choirs , brass players and organists unite in St Nic ’ s for a heart-warming service to battle the winter chill . Like so many aspects of Sevenoaks life , Covid-19 put a dampener on this , with the temporary dissolution of cross-year choirs such as the Choral Society and Sennocke Consort . This year , we had to play with the everchanging governmental rules , as well as the rules of intonation . Covid put a cap on choir numbers , so it was with a resilient , if small , collection of Upper Sixth girls that we set out to have one Christmassy performance , even if it was just for our enjoyment .
The possibility of live performance rapidly dwindled with every passing week , leaving us with the only option of a virtual performance which , if a little disappointing , was still preferable to coronavirus .
The piece itself – A Ceremony of Carols – was an obvious option . It is the holy grail of Christmas choral music and is put on practically every year at my home cathedral in Gloucester ( who have now equalised their girl and boy choristers ). For our choir ’ s purposes , it offered a rare piece which was intended for treble voices yet contained enough harmonic and rhythmic complexity to keep us very well occupied . If Britten ’ s marks of melody are more hidden , his intricacy is certainly not .
60 MUSIC REVIEW