Here’s a brand new What to get your organist for Christmas to inspire your nearest and dearest. And tell them to check out the previous years’ instalments, to be found at the bottom of this page.
Something to read
Andrew Gant writes with humour, insight, and scholarship about the music we are immersed in, day in and day out. In A History of our Favourite Christmas Carols, he discusses how these songs got their magic. ‘We may think they belong in a long, unchanging tradition,’ he says. ‘This book shows the extent to which that is true: which is not very.’
In his second book, O Sing unto the Lord, A History of English Church Music, he produces the definitive biography of an English tradition stretching back over a thousand years. He writes as both a scholar and a performer: both books are hugely engaging and a perfect post-Christmas read.
Just out in hardback is John A Rice’s account of that elusive martyr and patron of musicians, St Cecilia, and how her cult got going through fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Lots of colour illustrations, and musical examples: here’s my review: Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance, The Emergence of a Musical Icon.
Something to watch
Also out in time for Christmas is Fugue State Film’s latest DVD and CD boxed set, Bach and Expression. Organists Martin Schmeding and Daniel Moult discuss how we can play Bach today, while exploring the organs and cultural history of the Central Germany of his time. They’re joined by Christine Blanken of the Leipzig Bach Archiv, and fill several hours with anecdote, musical examples, historical detail and scholarship. The filmed documentary is divided into 7 chapters, each devoted to a different period in Bach’s composing life, and there are two CDs included of fine performances, from chorales to the Passacaglia. Read my review here: So how do you play Bach’s music today?
Stocking fillers
In Quires & Places (@QuireMemes) is a Twitter account specialising in the sort of esoteric jokes that generally only church musicians understand – during the pandemic one of their quips about tenors was taken far too seriously by someone in the Welsh Government Office, and incorporated, temporarily, into their Covid Guidance about Singing, to much choral hilarity. They have a spin-off shop, and I want to suggest their ‘Chord of Christmas’ mug.
The chord in question is the eagerly anticipated ‘WORD’ chord, as in ‘WORD of the Father…’ in the Willcocks arrangement of the final verse of O come, all ye faithful. It is of course a half-diminished seventh on B in root position, or better, a minor seventh flat five chord. (Or just say its Bm7(b5) if you want to sound cool and with the jazz guys and gals). I’m looking forward to explaining all this to my family over coffee on Boxing Day.
Finally, a freebie that I was given this summer at the AGO National Convention in Seattle, which I now can’t do without: an eraser pen. Much slicker and more convenient than scrubbing away with the grubby edge of an eraser block. You should ask for a couple: something like this.
