Happy Christmas War Is Over Choir Of Kings College
Happy Christmas Everybody - 75 Great Christmas Songs. John & Yoko & The Plastic Ono Band with The Harlem Community Choir - Happy Xmas (War Is Over). Choir Of King's College, Cambridge with Sir Philip Ledger - O Little Town Of.
A little after 3pm on Christmas Eve – every Christmas Eve, for almost a century – millions of people around the world stop what they’re doing, switch on the radio, and listen for a lone, unaccompanied boy treble from the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, as he embarks on the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City.To many, the ethereal solo heard at the opening of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service is the sound of Christmas distilled. To the boys in question, though, it’s just another solo.
Or so they say‘Everyone’s prepared for it, and we all do solos at one stage or another, so there isn’t that much pressure,’ says 13-year-old Sam., one of 16 boy choristers aged between eight and 13, all of whom attend the college’s preparatory school. With 14 undergraduate choral scholars from the university, they make up arguably the world’s most famous choir. ‘And no,’ Sam continues, pre-empting me, ‘everyone thinks we’re very competitive with one another, but we’re really not.’Famously, at Nine Lessons and Carols the boy asked to perform alone for a global audience of about 30 million is selected at the very last moment. Only as the news headlines are being read out on the hour does the choir’s director, Stephen Cleobury, nod in the direction of his chosen one. It’s a method that’s existed since the service’s first radio broadcast in 1928, and allows Cleobury to ‘keep his options open’, limits jealousy between the boys and avoids one going to bed on the 23rd in a cold sweat.
Does it work?‘Yeeee-esss,’ Sam protests. ‘It honestly doesn’t matter. We’re all friends and support each other, so we’ll just be happy for whoever’s picked.
Besides, it’s what we do here all year. It’s what the school trains us for.’. It’s a midweek morning in November at King’s College School, six weeks before the 100th Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Autumn sunshine spills across the playing fields, with the River Cam in the distance; the four spires of the college’s Perpendicular chapel are set against a cornflower-blue sky. There are certainly worse places to get your start in life.A version of the school has existed for more than 500 years, having been founded in 1441 by Henry VI as a place to educate the young choristers in the college’s choir. Statutes decreed that there were to be 16, and they would be ‘poor and needy boys, of sound condition and honest conversation, being ascertainable under the age of 12 years, knowing how to read and sing’.By the late 16th century, many choristers lived on site, educated by clerks and junior fellows between their duties. In 1878 the institution was officially reorganised as a boarding preparatory school, moving to its current site – half a mile from the chapel. Today, in addition to the 16 choristers and six ‘probationers’ (trainee choristers in their first two years, who do as much practice as the older boys but may have more one-on-one work, and don’t perform as regularly), there are 400 ‘normal’ boys and girls.I arrive mid-morning, by which time the choristers are with the rest of the school in lessons. They’re all full-boarders – it is both traditional that they bond as a collective and logistically sensible to keep them together, especially as their days are long – so live in the school’s boarding house with a few non-chorister weekly boarders. ‘They’re woken up at seven and come down for breakfast – which is marvellous, some days it’s a cooked breakfast, some days it’s pastries,’ says Yvette Day, who joined as head earlier this year.
‘Then they do music practice from about quarter to eight, then start choir practice here at the school, then at around 9.15, join up and have a completely normal day of lessons, sports and activities.’A friendly but steely figure, Day wears a plum-coloured Fitbit that matches her nail polish, and a trace of her native South Africa washes through her accent. She hasn’t finished: after lessons and activities, the choristers ‘dress in their Eton suits, top hats and Eton collars before walking in two-by-two – known as “the croc” – over to the chapel’. There, they rehearse with Cleobury and the rest of the choir for an hour, before performing in evensong five nights a week during term time.There are also all the one-off concerts, tours (the choir travels around the world, its members greeted as celebrities) and special services to prepare for. Including, of course, the most famous of them all.
Happy Christmas War Is Over Choir Of Kings College 2017
‘I suppose, in a way, A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols is still the focal point of our year,’ says Revd Dr Stephen Cherry, the dean of King’s College since 2014, and previously its chaplain between 1989 and 1994.‘It’s busier these days, but Christmas Eve stands out. The radio audience is just huge; it’s sort of impossible to fathom how appreciated it is, but we want people to understand its history this year – that it is no accident that it started in 1918.’. Nine Lessons and Carols was the brainchild of Eric Milner-White, who had been appointed dean of King’s aged 34. Milner-White had been the college’s chaplain before he volunteered to be an Army padre on the Western Front. He was profoundly disturbed by what he saw (‘Battle is indescribable, unimaginable We feel powerless against those splitting cracks and roars,’ he wrote to colleagues in 1915), prompting him to rethink how worship was conducted at the college.Returning from the war to a college that had lost 202 men, Milner-White decided to make festivals simpler, warmer and more colourful affairs. He began just six weeks after the armistice with the creation of a new Christmas Eve service that would allow anybody to join and celebrate, as well as grieve for absent friends. Structured around a retelling of the nativity, it would contain no Latin, no sermon, no psalms and plenty of singing.After 1919, the order of service was fairly set, including starting with Cecil Frances Alexander’s Once in Royal David’s City.
While favourite carols have come and gone, its basic formula has remained relatively unchanged.‘It was an innovation in 1918, but by 1934 the BBC were calling it “traditional”,’ says Revd Cherry, who first heard the service as a child in Devon. ‘It obviously had the feel of something that had been happening for ever.’.
Anybody can apply by getting in touch with King’s and arranging to sing for Cleobury on a day set aside for auditions in January. There is currently a chorister with parents in Spain, while another recently moved to the UK with his mother from Romania. He is one of the few without a public-school background – something the college is keen to change.And they don’t have to be perfect singers. Cleobury looks for ‘potential and a love of singing’. They perform a short prepared piece, do some music exercises and have a chat.
A few days later, parents of successful candidates receive an offer.‘It’s really the most fantastic opportunity, and such a privilege to sing in the world-famous chapel every day. And it’s a very rounded education too; we really reap the rewards of all that’s on offer, gaining lots of skills we’ll use throughout life,’ Leo. says, hurrying along.If that sounds like a preposterously polished, prospectus-worthy quote from a 12-year-old, you haven’t met a King’s chorister. In some moments they are typical schoolboys, running around like Tasmanian devils, but when dressed up and interacting with strangers (or as one teacher puts it to me, ‘in full jazz-hands mode’), they’re 13 going on 65. Sam, a particular delight, has the speech patterns and weary wit of Edmund Blackadder.Given they board from the age of eight or nine, homesickness is an inevitable problem, Day says, but between her, housemaster Jill Etheridge, other tutors and ‘Matey’ (that’s the matron, Lisa Wilkinson), the pastoral care is abundant. So are the facilities: phones and laptops are banned for all ages, but there are plenty of evening activities – cooking, board games – and everyone is excited about a new sports hall on the way.Later, when I ask if they’re looking forward to the holidays, one boy tells me he ‘gets kind of bored, not having anything scheduled or any singing’.
Once inside the chapel they change into their red cassocks and white surplices, and line up with the undergraduate choral scholars. Cleobury rarely has to raise his voice, and doesn’t as he runs through that day’s evensong music. ‘If you keep them interested in what they’re doing,’ he says, ‘then they generally behave.’ His conducting style is all gentle hands and fluid motions.
‘Titus!’ he trills at one point, to the smallest chorister of them all, a boy who cannot yet see over the choir stalls. At Nine Lessons and Carols, part of Cleobury’s role is to try to help the boys forget there are 30 million people tuned in. ‘I try to give them the feeling that what we’re doing is perfectly normal. When you’re performing you need to concentrate on the music.’On the day, it is important he keeps calm, in order to communicate that to the choir.
He plans for weeks, keeps composed through rehearsals on Christmas Eve morning, and has a bowl of soup with friends before the service, to take his mind off it. Nothing – touch wood – has ever gone dramatically wrong, just the odd technical hitch. ‘There is an element of relief when it all goes to plan.’When it’s over, the boys go back to school for ‘a fantastic party’ with parents and teachers, before spending a last night there. They then perform again in the chapel on Christmas Day, before finally going home.Back at school, the choristers change out of their Etons and into personalised hoodies. They tuck into a supper of lamb kebabs, calamari and French beans before homework.We settle to talk about the future. ‘Just because we’re choristers doesn’t mean we’re going to be singers,’ says Jack., 13, who ‘might join the Army’.
It provokes discussion. One is adamant he’ll become a vet. Another ‘mainly aspires to become a criminal lawyer, though I also have two books I’m writing, a historical novel and a more abstract work’.There is one thing they can agree on: Christmas is the highlight of the year, and Nine Lessons and Carols is the pinnacle of it. ‘Sometimes we can take it for granted, this place, but at Christmas you realise how lucky we are,’ Jack says. There is the solo, I remind them.
It’s the starting gun for Christmas. It’s all on one of you.‘The thing is, is actually a very easy solo to sing. It has short phrases, quite easy notes. But then you think about it,’ Jack says. His eyes widen.
‘There are so many people listening.’The 100th Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service on Christmas Eve.The Choir of King’s College has also released a double CD set, 100 Years of Nine Lessons & Carols, to mark the anniversary.
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