7 posts tagged “christmas carols”
eep. very behind now. so you get two carols today, and they're kind of traditional ones because last night we went carolling, so i'm feeling oh-so trad and anon now. every year they do carolling round our area and anyone can come along and sing or knock on doors to collect for... something. new church roof perhaps? i should find out. i guess you can tell i don't go so much out of a community obligation but just because i actually like wandering around on a freezing cold night with lanterns singing christmas carols under lamp-posts. it was djeli's first outing and he actually enjoyed himself so much he even said that if he gets home in time on thursday night then he'll come along to the second session with me. we had a nice little group with some good voices, but a little light on sopranos, so i was mostly singing the tune and occasionally - eep!!! - the descant (for those of you who don't know, i am well and truly an alto and sang tenor with the boys when we did berlioz's te deum at uni. i am not built for high a-flat!), and some first-rate senses of humour were brought along too. loads of fun.
i'm not actually terribly fond of silent night generally. i believe fairly strongly that it should only be sung in german and parts and preferably by people who know what they're doing, but we actually made a fair fist of it last night. i was impressed with us :-) and we even had a request!!!
otherwise, not a terribly adventurous weekend. things have got a bit messed up, especially with djeli's second present. i've got his main one but really wanted to get a little additional something (i can't say what in case he reads this!) but because all our bank stuff here in the uk is connected to our joint account, i can't buy anything online because he'd see the charge come through on the statement, but finding this thing in a real-life store is proving molto difficile. aaargh!
some progress though: discovered that the reason we've been so sodding cold at home since the weather turned chilly is because it seems that djeli might have turned the thermostat on the heater down at the end of last winter... he's under orders to turn it back up. and as quickly as possible!
hopefully tomorrow i will be awake enough to do a proper review of the golden compass, but the short form is that i think they did quite a good job of very difficult subject matter overall. great cast. some marvellous effects (i thought the armoured bears were particularly well done) but a few of the niggles that i guess are inevitable in just about any movie adaptation of a book. more on niggles tomorrow.
i am pleased to say, i have wasted just about the entire day. i count this an achievement.
this morning i woke up late and discovered that - at 11am - the frost was still thick on the ground, so how could i resist? i bundled up and went for a walk down to the park. what a perfect winter's morning - the sun was bright, the sky was blue, there were birds and squirrels and little yappy dogs all over the place and it was quite quite perfect. see?
found this on northerngeek's vox, via the explore page and, me being me, just had to inflict it on you. you know the drill - consider yourself tagged
1. wrapping paper or gift bags? wrapping paper, every time. there are a few odd occasions where gift bags work (e.g. when i was given jacques-etienne - have you ever tried to wrap a teddy bear???) but overall, they seem to indicate a lack of willingness to really try. wrapping in our family is very important. there are a few key rules: 1. wrapping for family members must be fresh, not recycled from previous years 2. wrapping and card must both be kept as secret from the receiver as the actual present, until the point where they appear under the tree 3. if possible, put a ribbon round it. maybe two ribbons. if you can squeeze in a little fluffy toy or a christmas decoration on the present too in a stylish and elegant manner, then you go straight to the top of the class.
2. real tree or artificial? artificial. couldn't handle all those pine needles. BUT i'm very fussy about my artificial trees - can't stand the plastic sort that are trying to be real. the only right sort is the type that's made from green tinselly stuff.
3. when do you put up the tree? 1 december
4. when do you take the tree down? 6 january (epiphany, twelfth night) - when at uni i used to have friends round for dinner on twelfth night, which gave me an excellent excuse to make a sort-of twelfth-night cake, filled with custard (any excuse for custard). haven't done that in ages. maybe i should do it again this year.
5. do you like eggnog? i love the word eggnog. have never actually had the opportunity to taste it though. it's not the sort of thing that goes with a 40-degree-C christmas. roast turkey, ham, christmas pudding, yes, but we seem to draw the line at eggnog.
6. favourite gift received as a child? my cat
7. do you have a nativity scene? nope. not a tradition in our family. i seem to dimly recall asking if we could get one when i was a child and being told that only catholics have nativity scenes.
8. hardest person to buy for? my da
9. easiest person to buy for? generally my mother. what tends to happen is that i can't find anything for her for ages and then i can't stop finding things for her.
10. worst christmas gift ever received? a kris kringle present from someone who didn't know me very well. it was easy to see the reasoning: likes music and works very hard = relaxation cd. what she obviously didn't realise was that that stuff makes me want to break speakers... still, it's the thought that counts, eh?
11. mail or email christmas card? both. mail for the rellies in australia and anyone i have a snailmail address for who i remember to send one to, email/blog/flickr posting for invisible online friends, people i don't have snailmail addresses for and people who i was just too disorganised to get around to sending a real card to.
12. favourite christmas movie? hard to pick just one. there's sort of a trinity of tradition here: white christmas, miracle on 34th street (the original) and it's a wonderful life
13. when do you start shopping for christmas? far too late. generally i start panicking and thinking of lists as soon as i realise that we have yet again missed the seamail deadline (start of october), with actual shopping starting about 1-2 weeks before the airmail deadline (start of december).
14. have you ever recycled a christmas present? gosh no. that would be sacrilege.
15. favourite thing to eat at christmas? the traditional christmas breakfast. every year in australia i would host a christmas breakfast for all our friends. the menu would change a little from year to year, but generally would include: ten tons of homemade gingerbread men, decorated with mini m&ms, blueberry muffins, cheerios (cocktail frankfurts, that is, not the cereal), my mother's sausage rolls, homemade alcoholic icy poles (always the mango daiquiri ones, others depending on the mood of the chef and the time available), homemade non-alcoholic icy poles (most notably lemon-lime, and a rather amazing lindt dark chocolate ice cream)
16. clear lights or colored on the tree? coloured
17. favourite christmas song? if you've been reading this blog over the past month, you'll realise that that's way too hard a question to answer. today's carol is just one of the many, but is one i particularly love singing. this recording isn't ideal (i don't seem to have an ideal one among the three or four on my hard drive) - it's a little slow and the lower parts of the glorias are a little furry, but at least they're on pitch, which can sometimes be... challenging :-)
18. travel at christmas or stay at home? stay at home. in my family it's certain death to not be around at christmas. you can imagine how popular we've been, being over here for the past two, and now this one as well. this year will be the first christmas we've gone away and also the first christmas (and possibly the only christmas!) we'll have spent on our own.
19. can you name santa's reindeer? i could, but i wouldn't like to without meeting them first. it would seem rude.
20. do you have an angel on top or a star? neither. for some odd reason, the tradition in our family is always to have a santa on top.
21. open the presents christmas eve or morning? christmas morning. although this year it will be christmas eve because of pretending to be danish, and that way we can also do our presents at the same time my parents are doing theirs in sydney on christmas morning and we can all natter away over skype.
22. most annoying thing about this time of year? postal deadlines
well, today i had my first attempt at cooking with real cranberries. i thought i'd try out a recipe for cranberry syrup from tessa kiros' apples for jam. it looked simple enough - take cranberries, moosh them about with some sugar, add boiling water, moosh some more, strain and let cool. what it failed to mention was that the cranberries were actually as hard as little bullets. i don't know if that's how they're supposed to be, but mooshing them was somewhat like popping bubble-wrap made of steel. anyway, the end result is a pretty colour. tomorrow we'll discover whether the flavour has been worth the effort!
today's carol is another by an australian composer, but this time an original carol rather than an arrangement, and by my teacher, peter sculthorpe.
yes, the christmas presents for australia are not only bought and wrapped but SENT. I got them in the post this evening, scraping within the postal deadline by about half an hour. £85-odd quid on postage, mind you. but still better than last year's £100-odd. one year we will actually remember to do our christmas shopping in august and make the seamail deadline. and then we will go on holiday to iceland and live on caviar for a month. hmm. maybe not. too fishy.
i'm a bit of a wreck this evening, which i guess isn't surprising - to go from barely leaving the house to two 8-hour intensive days of christmas shopping in the west end while still really being in convalescent mode, i suppose it's not surprising i feel kinda trashed. but it'll be a quieter day tomorrow. tidying up the detritus from the wrapping, a gentle trip out to high street kensington for posh chocolate and watercolour masking fluid (not going to mix these two) so i can start my flickr/vox christmas card project, and then friends coming over for tea at the greek restaurant up in the village followed by said posh choccies and the posh coffee we bought the other day. should be lovely.
anyway, feeling a bit depleted today, and when i woke up from my involuntary nap earlier this evening i discovered that karlheinz stockhausen had died (not because of the nap, mind you), and while i've never actually enjoyed his music, he was still a very important composer - it feels like the end of an era and i'm kind of sad about that. so today's carol offering is a rather quiet and beautiful one that i always find restores peace to the chaotic seasonal surroundings. performance is once again by the sydney uni musical society (SUMS) from their carolfest recording. i hope it brings peace into your wrapping-and-baking time too :-)
6 days in and already i've failed at the daily posting thing. how do people keep this up for an entire month???! not to mention still having things to say.
i looked for a choral version of this carol, as with gladness, men of old, but i can't find one, even though i was sure i had one... somewhere, so instead you're getting the brass ensemble version, from djeli's one and only christmas cd, by australian brassery. the idea of a cd full of brass band music, even for christmas, does, i'll admit, sound a little daunting, but they're a good ensemble and a nice set of arrangements. in the words of good king wenceslas, "fear not!"
i'm supposed to be finishing off my website revamp so i can start applying for jobs - i've had three nibbles from agencies in the past day and all it's done is really make me not want to do anything at all about getting another job. gah. very slack. a friend has suggested i go freelance for a bit, and the more i think about it, the better it sounds. i've still got some money in the bank and if i can start getting a little extra coming in nowish, then i'll still be able to spend time on my music, but hopefully without ending up in a critical financial situation.
the last few days have actually turned out pretty well for the composition. i still feel like i'm slowly clawing my way back to sanity, but i've actually been able to get some thoughts down on paper, and have started to slowly expand one of them into a choral piece based on Psalm No. 1:
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
i particularly liked the bit about the "seat of the scornful" :-) i think it'll be fun. and a good starting point to get back into writing choral music given that, as i said last time, there are so many opps around at the moment for SATB.
my lovely da also sent through the christmas carol words he's been working on for my sydney commission, and i think they're pretty good. maybe just a couple of tweaks to be made, but not much.
and i've finally managed to get facebook to import my vox blog so it'll register when i've put in a new public post. given that most of my RL friends seem to be facebookers and not voxers or twitterers, this might be a good thing. time will tell... must stop procrastinating and go and buy djelibeybi a birthday present for tomorrow...
