Story of Christmas

The first of our carol services is tomorrow evening in St George's, Hanover Square. The tradition of singing there goes back to David Hill's time as Master of Music in the 1980s. I don't know exactly how it began but the event, known as The Story of Christmas, was run until last year by the late Robert Spooner and is in aid of Children's Charities. It takes the form of a Nine Lessons and Carols, somewhat dumbed-down, and the readers are all celebrities of various ranks. Dame Judi Dench is the patron and attends most years, last year sitting next to Daniel Craig, who remained long enough to read one of the lessons before slipping off to another engagement. The Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, provides the climax to the ceremony as he declaims the opening of John's Gospel in his unique, authoritative voice - usually managing to upstage most of the preceding readers!

The music is, at the behest of the organisers, popular and accessible: Rutter = "great", Bach = "maybe next year". But this year I have had to acquiesce to the request to sing Parry's I was glad after the reading from Isaiah - a great piece of music but totally out of place in a carol service - as the new organiser apparently promised it to Dame Judi to lure her through the doors. I wonder how many of the audience (or is it a congregation?) will think we are in fact another, non-Catholic, Westminster-based choir when we sing this. I've ensured that a disclaimer appears in the order of service so that I can't be labelled as a liturgical ignoramus. It'll be interesting to see if anyone attending thinks that it's out of place.

One particular challenge this year is a carol sung in French, Berlioz's L'adieu des bergers, which is also included in next week's Christmas Celebrations, when it will have orchestral accompaniment. It's a few years since it last came up so I think most of the choristers were learning from scratch when we had a quick look before last weekend's exeat, but as of this morning it was sounding, to my ears, quite convincing. Many thanks to Mme Garnier for helping me to brush up on French pronunciation.