Playing and singing

Isn't this a wonderful sight? This is a corner of the violin shop from which we have hired a 'cello and a violin in anticipation of George's and Jonathan's arrival on Christmas Day.

A habit we've acquired here is to join the party at Jennie's and Bill's house to sing carols once a year, and that's what we did last night. We took my viola and Chris' clarinet along. This morning Chris sent Elva an email describing how we had

ended up at about a quarter past midnight getting lost (even with Ali in the car) trying to drive a Paris-based, Klezmer clarinet player back to the place where he was staying. He had spent the last part of the party teaching me Klezmer scales and wondering why I couldn't "just let go and let the music happen".

Other instruments at the party were the piano, a violin, a flute, a recorder and Bill's guitar. And our voices of course; the South American participants (from Columbia and Mexico)—preferred to sing in Spanish:

Belén, campanas de Belén,
que los ángeles tocan
¿qué nuevas nos traéis?

There was a French Canadian couple too; Marc Antoine demonstrating the correct pronunciation of Il est né, le Divin Enfant! Jouez hautbois... that we all repeated in chorus (sounding the Z). We sing in four parts, some of the carols very well known, some of them less familiar unless you have done a little pub caroling from time to time. A local folklorist called Shelley Posen has compiled an anthology of "old and little-known Christmas Carols", such as A Song for a Time that dates back to the days in Old England when everybody knew his place:

A song for a time when the sweet bells chime
Calling rich and poor to pray
On that joyful morn when Christ was born
On that holy Christmas day.

The squire came forth from his rich old hall
And the peasants by two and by three.
The woodman let his hatchet fall
And the shepherd left his tree.