[The views expressed in this blog are from my personal experiences from 25 years of leading non-auditioned community choirs in the UK, as well as adult singing workshops. My focus is on teaching by ear using a repertoire of songs from traditions across the globe. Your experiences may differ from mine, so do feel free to leave a comment and let's begin a conversation! A version of this article first appeared as a post on my blog From the Front of the Choir]
‘Tis the season to be jolly! Most choirs are busy rehearsing for their Christmas concerts.
But my choir isn’t. Here’s why we don’t sing Christmas carols.
It’s not that I’m a curmudgeon or a Scrooge. OK, maybe I am, but that’s not the point.
If you’re going to do justice to a concert of Christmas carols then you’re going to have to put the time in for proper rehearsals. Which means you have to start a good few months before your December concert date.
The start of the autumn term in September is too late if you’re going to learn a bunch of new songs (and nobody wants to hear exactly the same carols as you sang last year), so maybe you need to start rehearsing the songs in the summer term. Which means June sometime.
In which case you’d better have chosen the carols by Easter.
Allowing some time for research and making some really good and original choices, that means you’d probably best start in early spring.
But hey, there’s the spring term and concert to sort out so you’re bound to be too busy. Maybe better to start sometime in the New Year. In January. Which, of course, is a busy time with family, parties and recovering from last year’s Christmas carol concert.
So the perfect time to start planning is right after your Christmas concert.
That means that the whole year is spent thinking about one single tiny concert that happens to occur around Christmas. All that work and there’s only one time of the year you can sing those songs.
The alternative (and some choirs do this) is to churn out the same old carols year after year which is perhaps what the public want: familiarity.
For me that’s deathly. And unoriginal. And very, very dull.
By all means have a concert at Christmas and maybe even throw in the odd seasonal song. It doesn’t have to be a well-known carol, it could be from any of the cultures which celebrate Christmas.
At least it means that the audience will be surprised. It’s different (and you’ll stand out amongst all the other Christmas concerts going on).
Years ago with my first few community choirs, I used to teach one new Christmas song each year (which meant we didn’t have to start learning it until the autumn term). Over the years we built up quite a nice selection of Christmas songs from all around the world. We would sprinkle a couple in our concert each December, fill the rest of the programme with other stuff, and teach the audience a simple arrangement of a well-known carol at the end. Everyone was happy.
These days I’ve got off the concert treadmill, and my choir only performs one major concert a year in the spring. Cleverly avoiding the Christmas thing!
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Chris Rowbury
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