Two Choral Anthems for Advent
"Go, Go Tell It" and "In the Bleak Midwinter"
These anthems were part of our annual traditional (as opposed to contemporary) pre-Christmas combined services (no contemporary service that day). The livestream recording, from which they were excerpted, is from the second service, meaning that we had already been rehearsing and then singing for the first service for over three hours, since 7:30 in the morning! I think the audio here came out reasonably well, all things considered. It’s certainly not like being there. Livestream is a separate mix from house, and it tends to have issues more frequently.
The first piece, Go, Go Tell It, is a variation on Go Tell It on the Mountain, and we had lots of fun with it. The two lead singers represented 1/4 of our alto section that day, but the remaining half dozen of us still came through. You don’t hear much of the leads when they start because livestream didn’t bring their mics up at first, but that was eventually corrected.
We’ve been singing in this new choir configuration for some time now, soprano-alto on the left and bass-tenor on the right, and it sounds better from where I stand. I now have the soprano section in my bad ear instead of the tenors, and that is much more pleasant, although sometimes when those sopranos really get going I can hardly hear myself sing. I’ve sung next to the sopranos in other choirs, though, and it is my preference.
The second piece, In the Bleak Midwinter, has been playing in my head since we first practiced it, and we had been practicing it and the other for quite some time. It’s still playing there. I had only been hearing the alto and soprano parts clearly, though, because the men are now positioned far to our left. It was quite surprising, pleasingly so, to hear on the recording the complete ensemble.
It was a somewhat challenging day for me, because when we weren’t singing I was running around dealing with technical issues. I managed to get all the lights turned either on or off as they should be, made sure the icicle backdrop lights weren’t running a dim-and-blink sequence (one side was doing that during the Saturday rehearsal; the other side was unplugged), arranged for the Advent candle table to be spotlighted during that lighting, and helped a little with screens. That meant arriving late on the risers and having to virtually crawl up the center steps, since I can’t climb them the regular way. (I have a “twin” in the bass section who has to do the same thing.) On one ascent I soft-landed in someone’s lap, but no harm done.
I almost backed out of this whole thing a couple of weeks beforehand. I had been having a difficult day already, and I arrived at the regular weekday choir practice to find it noisy and crowded — we were full up and elbow to elbow on the risers. I was very uncomfortable. But I sat on the idea, and returned to rehearsal again the next week. It was the same situation, but this time it didn’t bother me. I had remembered some of the many times before when choir was like this, and there was a certain passage in Bleak where we start the second (“seed”) verse, full choir, that just kept calling me back, unconditionally.
Somehow, it all worked out. And as we were singing on Sunday, I began to see certain things more clearly about this world we are living in and what I understand needs to be said about it that isn’t often being said. That was a gift, arising from persistence, and I hope to be making use of it in my writing going forward. In fact I already did, in my most recent post in the main section here.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, December 10, 2023
Excerpted from youtu.be/8swToTJxg24
Lovely!!