Sing, Choirs of Angels

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 20 December 2004 12:24:35

And they did. And I was SO proud of them. Yesterday was C-Day (which stands for Carols, Christmas and Chaos, rather than anything ruder) at our lovely church. One service in the evening, one in the morning and a wonderful lunch with some old college friends of mine in the middle.
For the first time, I had to conduct a choir and a small number of instrumentalists. I REALLY wanted as many people as possible to feel involved (people who would never get a chance to sing at the front usually) so I had issued an invitation to all comers. The resulting group ranged from a rather pained-looking tenor who obviously thought the whole thing was terrible (but we only had three weeks) to some wonderfully enthusiastic and terribly flat people who had never sung carols before - or, it would appear, anything at all apart from Abba. It was, without a doubt, the hardest work I have done for quite some time to get them to learn 8 christmas carols and two non-congregational pieces.
But it worked, in the sense that we made a big noise, everyone smiled and the congregation got on with worshipping God (though it was a bit bizarre for me to see people with their hands in the air during Hark The Herald Angels Sing - perhaps they thought I was doing that too, rather than conducting). My girl soloist did fantastically in Once In Royal David's City, and when I saw how happy the people who were involved (apart from the pained-looking tenor, obviously) had been made by singing at the front, I nearly cried.
So Hurrah. It may not have been Carols From Kings, but it was really church, and really us, and I was proud of them all. Proper Christmas stuff, I think- and I'm sure God was smiling, even when we went flat and forgot to come in. After all, I'm sure the shepherds couldn't sing all that well either.