The storm that stole Christmas

The list of thankless tasks grows ever longer. It already includes being a farmer, parish clerk, weather forecaster, pot-hole repairer and unfairly maligned, little understood, teeth-permanently-gritted water company executive. To this inauspicious list, I’d like to add another one: Music Director.

Imagine weeks if not months of leafing through music scores, ear-worming countless CDs, cringing at concerts on YouTube, agonising over past performances, all to construct the perfect programme of Christmas music for a village choir. Your options are:

1) The choir’s usual mix of popular carols, seasonal singsongs – everyone loves Jingle Bells – and the occasional curveball ranging from Monteverdi to Santa Baby. The reaction from half the choir is goody goody; the other half yawn.

2) Or an ambitious combination of Baroque, avant-garde, unfamiliar and modernist curveballs. The reaction from the second half of the choir is goody goody; the first half threaten to resign en masse.

And what about the audience? What would they make of ‘Hodie’ over ‘Hark the Herald’, or ‘Oh Magnum’ over ‘Oh Come’? Because the final 2024 programme, introduced with a flourish at first rehearsal in September, was full of Bach, Britten, Poulenc and Vaughan Williams. Not one bell jingling, merry Christmas wished, or partridge in any sort of tree. Not that partridges normally sit in trees but that’s not the point.

Rehearsals oscillated between ok to bad to good to worse to ok to got it in the nick of time. We all loved the Bach, but one section in particular we found very hard. It’s not hard, said the MD, it’s different. Different in a hard way, we grumbled, and to prove our point we messed up at the final Thursday evening rehearsal. If the MD’s looks could kill! But her tongue was even more intimidating. Britten was, well, Britten. Never one of my favourites, I found his rhythms counterintuitive, the breathing impossible, and the medieval lyrics drew a response from my Anglo Saxon vocabulary. Poulenc grew on me, even the third motet that I sang flat every time. The first motet was delightful, apart from the sopranos’ top F, sung PP. The fourth motet was a lot of fun, but I needed to bounce off the tenors in one bar and I couldn’t darn well hear them. Sing up, Chaps! The Vaughan Williams I’d sung before; as last time, I relied on the basses to come in at the right time on the right note (in the right order, as Eric M would say). In the end I had to pick up on the cello to guide me, and also ignore one of the other altos who shall remain nameless.

Of course, the MD continually, repetitively and exasperatedly exhorts us to look up from our scores and watch her. Yes, Luv, but if you want the right notes AND the right words AND the right dynamics AND the right rhythm AND the right entry (AND the right order) you’re going to have to relax the wine rations.

And it’s not just balancing the programme and herding the choir in the right direction. An MD has to source quality musicians and soloists, choose readings and readers, design posters, chair the committee, adjudicate scraps, and arrange emergency cover for herself and the rehearsal pianist in case of illness. Being an MD of our village choir is, I must stress, her hobby. She has a day job and a family as well.

Cometh the day, cometh the two-and-a-half-hour dress rehearsal at the village hall. After a shaky start, the sops hit their F, the tenors sang up, the basses nailed it, and the miscreant alto was beautifully inspired. Further, despite storm Darraaaaaaaaaaagh, the baritone soloist made it from Leeds, the harpist arrived from Wales and the cellist was also on time. Phew. And, notwithstanding the ‘elitist’ programme (nothing wrong with elitism; it’s dumbing down that’s the problem in this country), all tickets had been sold, the raffle for the beautiful hampers was going well, and the MD was smiling, not grimacing. What could possibly go wrong in the evening?

Yeah, well, you know what went wrong. At 17:16, Darraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh huffed and puffed a bit more and the power went out in the village, including at the village hall and, more alarmingly, at the pub across the road where Hubby and I were meeting friends for a pre-concert supper. We live outside the village in the People’s Republic of Webbistan – currently gearing up to overthrow Starmerstan – and we get our electricity from another line of cables or whatever the correct technical expression is. We only knew of the power outage from the interchanges on Facebook and the choir committee WhatsApp group. At 17:35 or thereabouts, the power came back on, so we phoned our friends who were en-route from Aylesbury to say everything was ok, and we jumped in the car to head to the pub. Lots of debris on the road, I said to Hubby. Yes, he replied. I added, I don’t think there’ll be any deer on the road this evening. No, he replied. Down! Down! Down! I yelled, when I saw a tree lying across the road. I meant Tree Down, of course, and luckily Hubby put two-and-two together when he saw the Tree Down. He braked. Fortunately, there was room to swerve around it on the other side of the road. Thoughtfully, I texted a neighbour – one of the tenors who sings up – to warn him to be careful. Unfortunately, I forgot to text the MD who would also be coming along that road later.

We drove into the village. No streetlights. No lights in windows other than battery-operated Christmas decorations. Got to the pub and was told that the power had come back on and gone off again. At which point our friends arrived. Given that I had to be at the hall at 7pm, we couldn’t hang around waiting for the power to come back and remain stable, so it was back to our place, where I threw stale nibbles and old olives into bowls. Hubby sorted through the out-of-date beer, and I peered in the fridge to see what I could put with pasta. Parmesan cheese was a good start. While cooking, I got a message from the MD that there was a tree down near the spinney. Thank you, was all I replied. 

Not having heard that the concert was cancelled, we assumed it was on and headed back towards the village. We’d only gone 100 yards when we came across our neighbour – the tenor who sings up – who said the concert was cancelled. It hadn’t been announced because digital comms in the hall were non-existent, but I still had to go and return my music scores. So we did, pulling out of the lane behind a tractor festooned with Christmas lights. Isn’t that lovely, said Hubby. Bah, humbug, said I. This time he braked much earlier to avoid the collapsed tree. And just as we were coming into the village, we saw part of a tree to the right and part of a tree to the left. That faller must have blocked the whole road, and someone had thankfully cleared it. For some reason no one had cleared the way into Webbistan.

The rest of that evening, the choir committee WhatsApp group was busy with triumphant announcements of the power returning (20:26), requests for helpers to put tables and chairs away on Sunday morning, promises of help for the morning, and fingers crossed for another village’s concert on Sunday evening.

Then the MD posted, “I am so so so sad.” The committee rallied behind her, trying to cheer her up, congratulating her on her expertise, and positing that we could revive this elitist programme for Christmas 2025 so all the hard work wouldn’t be wasted.

I relayed these comments to Hubby, who said, “Shame you’ll miss it. We’ll be on holiday.”

“Well, cancel the holiday,” I squeaked. “The MD can’t do without her star alto.”

“You’re so funny,” said Hubby, which inspired me to add another task to my list of thankless ones: that of being married to Hubby.