Christmas Favorites

The second weekend of December will probably include more church Christmas concerts, cantatas, pageants, and services than any other time in the month. Indeed, my own church choir will be presenting two performances of its concert this weekend. The program will include beautiful Christmas carols and songs, performed by our 110 voice Sanctuary Choir, Handbell Choir, organ, and percussion, along with meaningful and tasteful narration and lighting. The music will include settings by such luminaries as John Rutter, Malcolm Archer, and Mack Wilberg.  Wilberg, Music Director of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir, composes or arranges much of the music for his choir, and many of the pieces are especially well suited for a large choir such as mine.   We will sing three of his pieces, Suo-gan, a beautiful Welsh lullaby, The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy, a joyful West Indian Carol, and O Holy Night, an absolutely breathtaking setting of that well loved Christmas song.

All this leads me to my question of the day.  There is so much beautiful Advent and Christmas choral music available for performance. My challenge each season seems not to be what to select to perform, but rather what to exclude!  So, what is your favorite Christmas selection (or selections, if you can’t narrow it down to just one)?  Who knows, you might see your choice included in one of my programs next year!

Let It Snow!

As Christmas fast approaches, many of us wish for a holiday with snow (especially those of us in the South, where such an event is rare indeed).  I find myself thinking more and more about songs that include “snow” as part of the overall theme.   My favorite secular song is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.  It is a wonderfully sentimental song and was a tremendous hit with our armed forces when it was first introduced during the Second World War.  Our young men and women, whether serving in the Pacific or in Europe, were reminded of home, family, and what they were fighting to protect when they heard the words by that great American songwriter, Irving Berlin:

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas

just like the ones I used to know.

Where the treetops glisten and children listen

to hear sleigh bells in the snow.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas

with every Christmas card I write.

May your days be merry and bright,

and may all your Christmases be white.

Many of my favorite carols also introduce the subject of snow.  Consider the exquisite poem by Christina Rossetti, set beautifully to music by Gustav Holst, as well as by Harold Darke.  The piece is In the Bleak Midwinter:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Still, Still, Still is another piece which never fails to move me.  My church choir did a Mack Wilberg setting of this lovely little lullaby at its recent Christmas concerts.

Still, still, still,

One can hear the falling snow.

For all is hushed, the world is sleeping,

Holy Star its vigil keeping.

Still, still, still,

One can hear the falling snow.

I’m sure you have some favorite Christmas/Holiday “snow” selections.  How about sharing them in this blog.  You may even find that your suggestion is included in one of my future concerts!

‘Tis the Season!

The second weekend of December will probably include more church Christmas concerts, cantatas, pageants, and services than any other time in the month. Indeed, my own church choir will be presenting two performances of its concert this weekend. The program will include beautiful Christmas carols and songs, performed by our 115 voice Sanctuary Choir, Handbell Choir, organ, brass, and harp, along with meaningful and tasteful narration and lighting. The music will include settings by such luminaries as Sir David Willcocks, Stephen Paulus, and Mack Wilberg. We will in fact be closing the concert with a fairly recent arrangement of O Holy Night by Mr. Wilberg that promises to touch every beating heart in the audience.

That leads me to my question of the day. There is absolutely so much beautiful Advent and Christmas music available for performance. My challenge each season seems not to be what to select to perform, but rather what to exclude! So, what is your favorite Christmas selection (or selections, if you can’t narrow it down to just one)?

Fanfare for a New Day

Fanfare for a New Day marks the beginning of a third decade of music making for The Michael O’Neal Singers, and in a concert on October 25th we will indeed perform new music for a new day.  All of the selections to be performed will be by active, living composers, with most of the pieces written in the past ten years.  Beautiful melodies, lush harmonies, intriguing rhythms, and meaningful texts are joined together to create a program that should provide many memorable musical moments.

From an e.e. cummings poem set exquisitely in twelve-part  a cappella form by composer Eric Whitacre to an inventive mass setting that would sound perfect in a jazz club, by former King’s Singer, Bob Chilcot, this is a concert that will have something for everyone.   Other composers to be performed are David Conte, David Dickau, Guy Forbes, Dan Forrest, William Hawley, Morten Lauridsen, John Rutter and Mack Wilberg.   The music created by these composers should assure us all that choral music has a bright future, as long as we keep producing the choirs to sing the music.

Are there “new” pieces of music that have been meaningful to you?   Many of you have shared in past blogs some of your favorites.  Share them again or offer some new titles.   To choral enthusiasts, it is a fascinating subject!