Tower and Town, December 2023

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What Is Your Favourite Christmas Carol

Singing Christmas carols is often one of our earliest musical memories and most of us have at least one which is a particular favourite.

For our Mayor Nick Fogg -- “It's 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel' - because it hails the coming of Christ into a world torn apart by conflict and suffering - a message for today. It represents the Victorian revival of interest in medieval settings and it was set to music by a man from my hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Victorian composer Thomas Helmore. 

“What more could you ask?”

From your editor -- “‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ in the Latin version – the lovely Latin vowels of ‘Adeste Fideles’ were my first introduction to the Latin language and seemed to give added importance to the exhortation to “come and adore him”.”

From the Tower & Town chair -- Sarah Bumphrey, why she loves ‘Gabriel’s Message’ - “I first heard this carol in 1969 at my high school’s Advent Carol Service, ‘our gift to the town’ in the words of our music teacher, Miss Drake (her nickname was Dracula and she was formidable). Indeed the church was packed with pupils, teachers, parents and townspeople and a palpable air of excitement.

“As first year pupils, we were delighted to be missing double Biology (we called it Bilge); there was the added frisson of the presence of the boys of the grammar school, whom we rarely saw except when they were sitting morosely on the school bus. We were also in awe of the beautiful sound of the school choirs and aspired to the honour of passing the audition and being allowed to sing with them. The appeal of this carol goes beyond personal recollections. My carol book tells me that ‘Gabriel’s Message’ is an old Basque carol, translated loosely into English by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924). He gives the carol a medieval flavour with mention of a ‘lowly maiden’ and a ‘most highly favoured lady’ (transformed with glee by many a young choir member to ‘most highly flavoured gravy’). Gould also beautifully captures the alleviation of the darkness in the snowy white of Gabriel’s wings and the candlelight in the ‘eyes as flame’ ”.