by Kevin T McEneaney
Last Sunday evening, under Music Director Daniel Koch, The Millbrook Community Festival Choir performed its annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. They opened with “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” an English Carol from 1760, yet possibly older than that. It is sometimes known by its exuberant refrain, “Tidings of Comfort and Joy.” The lessons and carols to come did evoke comfort and joy!
The twenty-eight-strong choir featured nine sopranos, nine Altos, six tenors, and three bass voices. There were two excellent guest soloists: Tenor Nicholas Hudak and Soprano Stella Chepaitis. Hudak was impressive in the baritone range, while Chepaitis soared in dramatic high notes. On piano, they were accompanied by the precise cadence of Naseer Ashraf.
“In the Bleak Midwinter,” an 1872 poem by Christina Rossetti, which has more than one arrangement, followed. This carol was particularly fitting due to the dark and snowy landscape from the Sunday morning snowstorm.
The intertwining alteration of appropriate religious texts with carols offers an effective and stimulating format. These texts focused on the religious reformer Yeshua of Nazareth, who was most likely born in 6 BC (some historians think 5 BC), his father being Joseph ben Joseph, the youngest of Herod the Great’s offspring from his fourth and last marriage.
When Herod discovered the secret marriage to a very young, wealthy Hasmonean woman in Bethlehem, he presumed that Joseph (who owned the winery, grist mill, pottery center, and carpentry business in Nazareth) was secretly plotting to disenfranchise his other favorite sons, and from is estate in Jerusalem he ordered a massacre of all children under the age of two in nearby Bethlehem. Luckily, this family was warned at night before the morning massacre of about 200 children under two years old (Yeshua was likely one year and nine months old at the time.)
Luke’s charming narrative focuses on the family’s inability to find shelter after midnight; they end up spending the night in a remote rural barn and are visited by curious shepherds. (Have you ever attempted to find a motel after midnight?) This bucolic incident of the survival of the learned, future-wise rabbi who was illegally crucified by Pontius Pilate remains celebrated around the globe with numerous songs and hymns, and those present joined in singing such wonderful songs and carols.…
The final hymn, sung with remarkable energy, was “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and I was glad to be there singing along with all those who attended this delightful celebration of the Christmas season, which uplifts joy in the face of adversity and single-digit temperatures…
P.S. Lyall Community Church presents a Christmas Jazz Concert next Sunday at 4 pm with noted jazz performers.
