Northwest Boychoir

Last night at St. Mark's Cathedral

The sending of Christmas cards may be moribund, as I suggested in my last post, but not so the singing of Christmas carols.  Last night I attended the annual performance of "A Festival of Lessons and Carols" by the Northwest Boychoir (together with"Vocalpoint! Seattle," an associated choral group of teenaged boys and girls), at St. Mark's Cathedral.

Last night's performance was their seventh of the Christmas season, performed throughout December in various Seattle-area churches.  Their seasonal offering reaches its culmination Monday night -- I'll be in Idaho  -- when they perform downtown in much larger Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony.

I've raved before about the singing of the Northwest Boychoir, after seeing them perform the "Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine" together with the Seattle Symphony in January 2017.  Their singing is perfect and highly disciplined.  Both they and their instructors should be congratulated.

The Lessons and Carols is based on the Christmas Eve service at King's College, Cambridge.  It began with four carols, followed by the reading of nine lessons from the Old and New Testament.  Each reading was followed by the choir's singing of a carol, followed by the audience/congregation's joining in a singing of a well-known carol.  Some of the boy readers -- although all were obviously Seattle-area residents -- appeared to be attempting an English university accent, which gave the readings -- all from the King James Version of the bible, with all its thee's and thou's -- additional dignity and force (at least to my Anglophile ears).

The two choirs entered the cathedral from the rear.  They paused half way down the aisles, in the hushed and partially darkened cathedral. Breaking the silence, a young, unaccompanied soprano began singing the first verse of "Once in Royal David's City," before being joined by the full chorus for the remaining verses as they filed to the front.  The boy's clear, high-pitched voice rang through the entire cathedral; the experience was mystical and spine-tingling.

The evening's performance, about ninety minutes in length, washed away all my customary "Bah, Humbug" pre-Christmas attitudes, and put me in the right frame of mind for celebrating Christmas three days from now.

Hey, now I don't even care if people stop sending Christmas cards!
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A number of clips from the similar King's College service can be found on YouTube. King's College originated the idea of commencing the service with a soprano solo of "Once in Royal David's City." To my untutored ear, last night's Northwest Boychoir's singing appeared nearly as good as that of the King's College Choir, but of course their chapel -- built between 1446 and 1515 -- adds a bit more glamour than does St. Mark's. Also, the English boys and young men appear more poised physically, and enter the chapel surrounded by typical English pageantry.