Carols through Seasons of the Year
Country folk wear flowers on St David’s Day in Wales, a daffodil worn with pride, and children in national costume in Welsh medium schools, eisteddfodau held for poetry, music, art and science and “Crowning of the bard’ a ceremony for poem of the year. Moffat in Scotland – where mama lives to this day – has a Scottish equivalent of sorts. Nestled in the Moffat hills, a jewel in the crown of southern Scotland. Baden Baden Powell: balloon flights and aviation poems. And every now and then, the chimes of Big Ben.
My teacher Dr Gordon Jacob, RCM, wrote the music for the WW2 Radio Show ITMA [it’s that man again], hence the writer’s occasional facility with words. Gordon lived at 1 Audley Road Saffron Walden (1959-84). Today a blue plaque marks the place where we would rendezvous.
The “Sussex Carol” is a Christmas carol much loved in Britain, sometimes referred to by its first line “On Christmas night all Christians sing”.
Up, up, and away. Enough for today, and prayer for the day. The Weather Forecast for inshore waters …say it loud and there’s music playing; say it softly and it’s almost like praying; Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. South Atlantic and the Yupik (or Yuit) carols of eastern Siberia and Alaska.
Andalusia, Peru and Argentinian. Prairie and dairy milking songs. Appalachian Spring, barn yards and homesteads. Carols for Organs, carols for Morgan’s [I’m a driver and club member] with a Bluetooth speaker system tucked neatly behind the seats.
“Kalinka”, “Viburnum tree”, and “ladybug”, from Bulgaria. My dartington [the ‘d’ was invariably lower case] an undergrad infamous for not washing his hair sold the show “blind date” the entire season.
Malcolm Arnold was another mentor living in Norwich for years with a publican and minder. I put together his filmic catalogue of key works for screen. Whistle down the Wind and most of his 70 film scores. Sightly foxed, dazed and confused but tottering by gently.
We hosted and still do, “Ways with Words” festival each year with guests the quality of Tom Courtney; Tom Conti and Frederick Raphael are still to play for. Australasia, Inuit and turning of the spit. Roasting and toasting, churning of buttermilk. Plague: the origin of ‘Ring a Ring a Roses, a pocket full of posies, a tissue, a tissue, all fall down’. The legendary pink dots …
Shires and desires, TE Housman. “Taking the Slow Train”, Flanders and Swan. Donald Swan, whom I worked with at Symphony Hall Birmingham, and in Stratford upon Avon, my hometown, at the Swan Theatre. My wife, Patricia, has a Theatre named after her there for her work with Ben Kingsley’s and Jeremy Irons’ children, and almost the entire children’s cast of “The Archers”– a story of everyday Countryfolk. The eldest of Ben’s children, Ferdinand Kingsley, Ferdie, whom we crucified as Jesus of Nazareth in the York Mystery Plays. It’s York St Nicholaus Fayre on Saturday, 19 November. Earlier there was November the Fifth, and each year April showers. Autumn leaves & Christmas Eve. St Christopher, St Nicholaus [The Feast of St Nicholas] Mixolydian modes and Toad of Toad Hall. Carols at bedtime, and atop the dreaming spires when Rhodes 1968 Scholar, Bill Clinton flew in by helicopter to join Christ Church choristers at dawn.
Boating songs and lullabies; nights of carousing to soothing refrains; May Day Carols, Morrises and mummers; and St Augustine’s day. Student drinking songs and thinking songs. Carols for Maundy: “the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor, especially commemorating Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday.” Carols for Advert, ‘dress down’ Fridays, and just, Carols for choirs, Willcocks, Jacques and Rutter. New Year’s day Carols: and Friday afternoons, Benjamin Britten. Would, like Field Marshall Montgomery refocusing his field glasses, need to take the long view.
