So you’re thinking of writing a carol…
Author: Blogger in Residence, Rory Johnston
ORA Singers just announced their ‘Christmas Gift’ opportunity, open to all composers, in which they will select 12 carols – or winter themed pieces – and record them professionally for the selected composers.
I know it’s still only early October, and I myself am not normally one to start talking about Christmas this soon, but this sounds like a great chance to not only hear your music performed by some of the top singers in the country, but also a chance to get your music seen by those who follow ORA’s projects – and getting started early, if you’re going to write a piece specifically for this opportunity, will give you more time to create something you’re really happy with.
I love Christmas carols, and my personal favourite has to be Good King Wenceslas as there’s nothing like shouting at the top of your voice for someone to bring you ‘flesh’ and ‘wine’ in the middle of a religious service…
Most of the carols that are sung in the modern Anglican church and are ingrained in the public consciousness come from Carols for Choirs 1, edited by the late Sir David Wilcox in 1961. Now, of course, carols existed before this, and many of the favourite tunes in that book come from a long history of local wassailing songs (footnote: The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists, but has largely been displaced by carolling. – now you know.) or from the Latin and English hymns of the Catholic and Protestant churches.
So, if you wanted to write a carol, where would you start?
Obviously, a text is important and likely the first place you will look for inspiration. A carol typically either tells a part of the Christmas story, for example: the Annunciation, in Gabriel’s Message; the Annunciation to the Shepherds, in While Shepherds washed their socks – sorry - *watched their flocks’; the visit of the Magi, in We three Kings; or even the much more gruesome scene of the Massacre of the Innocents, in Coventry Carol. It could also just be a text about Christmas-time events, like Good King Wenceslas, or I saw three ships.
After you’ve decided what story you’re going to tell, you will have to start planning your structure. Now, traditionally, carols have a distinct structure to them. A carol has what is known officially as a ‘burden’, which is essentially the precursor to the chorus in a modern popular song. The burden is the refrain that is repeated at the end of each verse – for example, in Coventry Carol, after each descriptive passage we return to the ‘Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child’ passage before carrying on. There are many carols that do not use this structure, but knowledge of a forms history means you can choose to carry on the traditional parameters, or change and manipulate them to create something new and fresh that still has an historic connection – or you could just ignore this info… that works too!
For those of you who haven’t read the small print – which you should always do! – there is a specification of the forces the piece can be for. ORA specify that the piece can be for any combination of SATB (so you could write for all four of those parts, or maybe just a piece for Soprano and Alto, etc.) and solos are allowed.
Crucially, though, they have stated that there may be no divisi within the choral parts – which means the parts cannot split at all. For many of you, me included, this might come as a bit of a dagger to the heart, as you love creating dense chords with multiple nooks and cranny’s for notes to interact with each other, and the restriction of not being able to have a free amount of voicings may feel like a real restriction on your musical vocabulary. I hear you – I’m partial to clashes and big chords, but I also think that restriction can be a very useful tool to create much more focussed music that isn’t as self-gratifying.
Going back to what I wrote last week about structure, if you want to write the catchy-est of carols, planning ahead as to what each section of the music is going to do and how it’s going to be characterised will give you much more room to be musically free and write the competitor to <insert your favourite carol here> as #1 Christmas ‘Banger’ 2019…
If you’d like to apply to ORA Singers’ Christmas Gift, click the button below and send in your entries before Monday the 18th of November!
Some of my favourite Christmas carols for your perusal:
The Christ-Child – Gabriel Jackson
In dulce jubilo – Richard Pearsall
Ay Luna que Reluzes – Anonymous from the Cancionero de Upsala
Good King Wenceslas – arr. Bob Chilcott
Written by Rory Johnston