I wish you a merry Christmas.
Preparing for Christmas, smoothing our corners, holding the line, looking for joy. Learning to sing in tune to lead the way.
I’ve eaten my single chips pushing through the double doors to the hall, towards the stinking changing rooms, now to the music corridor. Up the four stairs to the changing rooms and down two to the music corridor my space my place the lunchtime hideaway for the same people, the same oddbods and weirdos like me.
Lunchtime, the first Thursday after October half term — today we start singing Christmas carols
Same make-up free faces and smiles from the summer show, wind band and long lunchtimes hiding from prefects in the distant music corridor. Amy’s perfect long brown hair, Katy’s blunt bob frames her nervy, almond-beautiful face, Marie’s perfect curls, perfect smile and grades. Scruff of polycotton on polycotton.
Pete and Henry. Elbows. Shove across the piano stool knocking each other’s fingers trying to out-do each other up and down ‘The Entertainer’. I roll my eyes at them I say, “People who don’t like music love ‘The Entertainer’”. Ruth tuts her blunt chin and sighs. We’re every year of the school, the weird music kids.
“Get off the piano boys, stop showing off! Come on, put your backs into it!” Sir scrunches the white sleeves of his thigh-length blazer up over the black hairs of his slim arms. The curls of his extreme wet-look mullet brush his collar and his cheeks pop. He smiles from ear to ear. He knows all of us from every show, every service, every Mass.
Hollow ringing of metal on cheap carpet squares, we haul formica and metal desks to the windows, making space to stand in our messy crescent.
Moving the boys on and away, his right foot forever on a piano stool the leather of his cowboy boots crinckling sir leans into his fingers over the high practice piano. The creases around his eyes only darken because his eyes are bright we are ready.
Notes hit the air. I hear Amy, Ruth, Claire, their voices clear. With a rush up my sternum of joy we sing, “Oh! Little town of Bethlehem // How still we see thee lie.”
Wide broad smiles holding the tempestuous E so long so many long EEs trying to hold the tuning, the air crushes out of my diaphragm I worry it won’t come the full stop is so far but this just now I end ahead of the others and trying to not push out and up my lungs before diving, “Above thy deep and dreamless sleep” quick snatch of air “The silent stars go by”.
“Right, it’s time!”
In between the shoulders and jumpers I know the fizz drops away. In the far corner of school away from the eyes our eyes on him we take a breath a beat.
“The angel Gabriel
From Heaven came
His wings as drifted snow
His eyes as flame…”
With every “a”, sir’s eyes bug his shoulders his whole body rises as he smiles, hard, at each one of us. I smile wider and a tightness comes over and the music stops mid-bar.
“Enough! Come on you lot, I don’t want to hear ‘Most hiiiiiighlllly faaaaaaavored layyyydeee’, it’s not a gravy advert. Put on your best posh mum phone voice, stand up straight, and say your ‘a’s properly. Come on. Big smiles, twinkly eyes, shoulders backs and bust those bras. Repeat after me, ‘Most hi-lee fay-vorrrr-d laydee’”.
As we laugh at our primness, sir gives us space away from the hard attack and rearing up of our Kent “aiiyyyy” that flattens our voices, creates a turn to the left that unsettles and curls toes.
Hit hard on the “a”, follow through softly. It’s a quick vowel. End it now. Now start the next letter with intention. Don’t dither don’t blend.
Without telling it to, my face remembers the shape of my lips, my cheeks I need to hold to make this work. Air floods my chest rushes my brain.
Our harsh “aiiyyyyyy” gives way to an “aye” so soft and controlled my grannie would take me to the golf club.
Again and again we slowly speak the lines of ‘The Angel Gabriel’ until we sound like good little public school girls and boys that we are definitely not. We speak until we’re allowed to sing. Even then, sir’s cheek hovers over the keyboard checking our tuning then, “STOP!” as soon as we lose our pitch.
“Smile everyone! Come on! You don’t have to mean it, you just need to make this WORK”.
Repetition by repetition, sir ends his playing sooner and sooner. Pressing into keys, his eyes and the beat of his curls nudging us cleaner, tighter. To be in tune.
We breathe in and out, allowing our smiles to broaden so that our eyes sparkle and our notes are supported. Until the day that, as our echo turns to resonance, sir bends to keyboard, dings his tuning fork, thinks, and, finally, every point and crease in his face lights, “You’ve GOT IT!” Through every last long “a”, we’ve got it.
Waves of happiness of pride, we will be ready we can do everything else if we can find and hold this tuning.
We go straight back in back to fix in the feel the sound of the perfect pitch.
Lining up down the corridor, sopranos, altos, tenor and bass, the mossy back steps from the music corridor to the chapel are newly unlocked, just for us. Jiggling feet to feet bored chatting picking at blu-tack on the walls and avoiding the wafts from the changing rooms, Zoe picks my split ends and in the I see Henry and Clara snogging again and she is so smart so pretty on the Oxford track and how about Tim Spender and Ellie Smith but anyway how about did you hear about —
“Would you shut UP! What?! Why are you like this?!” Quick ashamed silence. We’re letting sir down.
But this year, it’s different. No more sitting and chatting as the parents, teachers, governors and priests enter the chapel for carol service. “We haven’t done all this work for you to be sitting around and chatting, picking each other’s hair and gossiping. Do this right.”
Carefully down the concrete, avoiding both sides of the doorway, hand again always in front together. Steady feet, quiet running through us. Neat the 1960s flat chapel feels like my grannie’s sitting room beech wood and carpet. Curtains pulled shut across Jesus protecting all 6 feet of him from modern life.
Over and over we walk to our benches, pick up our music, sit, stand, walk out, walk in and to our benches. Stand up sit down stand up sit down without bunching our skirts ruffling our papers or fidgeting. For the regular carols we have no words, the sopranos no music. Standing on our own two feet. Leading the congregation.
In the days before the service, our red-faced head of RE joins our rehearsals. She reminds us about clean shirts, decent tights — no ladders — polish our shoes.
Along a high ledge votives flicker against squat blue and yellow school colour stained glass windows, flat amid the December dark. More candles light the Tabernacle, the oak wood plaque, commending to God, students who have died.
Now, tonight, it’s time for the service. The lights are dim, candles and incense fill the air. We process in, rows and rows and rows of parents are here. For us.
I am grateful for learning the slight slip of my hand under the rough pleats of my skirt so it’s something I’ve learned and not something I need to fumble as always things falling out of my hands and fingers as everyone else moves smoothly, breathing in the expectation and nerves. The preparation we’ve all committed to delivering.
From our spot by the organ, we are 5 or 6 rows deep. The priests process, then Ms Dickens, Mr Red, Mr Rhagri, my parents, RE teachers, the readers, mum’s speech already practised at home, my dad as ever in good suit and highly polished brogues, then whoever else I don’t remember but always my mum and dad on the front row.
Papers crackle, a cough echoes across the silence.
After the same few readers read the readings we rolling our Rs around the plainchant of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!’, “Rejoice! Rejoice!” the rush of air up my lungs and the wide smile to hold the tuning through the “oy” the “sssssss” the first time to hit the right pitch for the second deep breath the speed of the air coursing through lungs heart throat brain eyes body mouth I know in my heart that Jesus is coming.
And now. It is time for the angel Gabriel to herald his vision. Sir, Mr Lovejoy, he smiles into his creases and warmth flows from his eyes.
At the piano, his back to the congregation, sir presses into our starting chord with such gentleness we only hear the suggestion of our starting note.
Hundreds of faces turn to us. I allow the air to flow in ahead so I’m not hiding away from the awkward start on “The”, so I’m not swallowing the “the” not fearing such a soft word hard to tune the long “eee” threatening immediate failure tight tight lips holding the pitch moving from eeee to aye inside the sound.
The four parts the bob and tilt of sir’s curved hands stopping us from running away and as I remember to pace down relaxing shoulders back the strength in supporting the notes pushing up from my diaphragm the few times I swim always so much easier but I don’t do it enough.
Running short on air I hope my breath at the wrong time doesn’t get noticed.
Deep in the middle of the choir, my friends all the strong singers the mains in every school summer show and I never get placed, I try to keep up keep on.
Our voices echo over the chapel, through to the spill-over seats in the hall, the few standing parents leaning on the curtains. They have come to see us, hear us. To pay attention.
Looking still at him that broad smile and together we bring the chord together start together finish together. The look in his eyes we have done good so good.
We held the pitch. We held the moment.
Golden soft light. Silence surrounds us. He grins, we smile back. There’s space in my head relief and joy cascade over my chest lightness and giddy with glee. We were amazing.
Time for the next carol, we take a beat through the introduction, apply the smile draw the air lead the congregation.
In my heart I know, He is coming.
Notes on the carols:
If you don’t know it, here are two recordings of ‘The Angel Gabriel’, on Spotify or YouTube. You can hear the importance of tuning “a”. Say “a” as you usually do, then say it like the late, great Queen: can you hear how the Queen’s pronunciation maintains the tuning? I’m not saying it’s correct for daily life, simply that it works for traditional choral music :)
And, advent carol ‘Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel!’ on Spotify or — again notice how the choirs ‘attack’ the “r” on “Rejoice!” English people don’t roll their “r” sounds, our Welsh and Scottish neighbours/countrypeople know how to actually pronounce “r”. When choral singers ‘swallow’ their Rs, it loses the power.