For weeks, our little vocal ensemble here in Bowie has been rehearsing for our upcoming Festival of Lessons & Carols. In music, we talk so much about “ancient” traditions, meaning traditions at least a few centuries old. By that standard, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is a mere youth!
The format dates back to a service designed for Christmas Eve, 1880 in Truro, Cornwall. The best-known version of the festival, and the one we’ll be following here in Bowie, was first used at Kings College, Oxford, England, in 1918. Only 89 years ago.
It’s such a nice design for a service. It’s structured around nine familiar Scriptural readings that progress from Old Testament prophecy to the Birth of Christ. In between comes music, both congregational singing and choral anthems.
And that’s where our “rehearsing” comes in: Bowie Texas isn’t a big place. And it’s most definitely an authentic Cowboy Town. There’s not much of what might be called the “high” arts and certainly not much formal liturgy. So, we’re on a crusade to see just what we can create.
To me, though, the real mission for Lessons & Carols is to be a reminder. A reminder that, despite the early onslaught of Christmas fever in the commercial market, the month of December is actually Advent (from the Latin adventus meaning “coming”) in the Liturgical Calendar. Advent is a penitential season, and has its own music, wonderful tunes not necessarily part of the Christmas Carol loop. In dulce jubilo, Nun komm den Heiland Heiden, and Wachet auf—these are time-honored tunes used as a basis for incomparably beautiful Advent organ and choral works especially by Baroque composers like J.S. Bach.
This year I’m going to play several of these organ pieces, including, after the seventh reading, my favorite setting by J.S. Bach of In dulce jubilo. Last year, after the first big chord of this composition, two people in the congregation jumped up, thinking we were beginning the hymn itself (“Good Christian Men Rejoice”). Well, everyone else jumped up too. Oops! What to do? I made a radical turn out of Bach and caught up with them, albeit in a very high key that all regretted! Bach would have been amused, I’m sure.
This year we laid the program out more clearly. Maybe I’ll actually get to play In dulce jubilo. But even if I do, something else unpredictable will happen. That’s what makes music-making so fascinating, whether in a concert hall, church or synagogue, or out in a big stadium. It’s live, hence alive. And that means humans give their best effort, their highest training and knowledge, their passion, their drive. All so that the power of the music shapes the very air we breathe.
Image “Advent Wreath – Closeup” by goforchris (cc)