Rod Posted December 21, 2014 Share Posted December 21, 2014 CHRISTMAS CAROLS - From Village Green to Church Choir. Andrew Gant. ( Profile £9.99 ) Have just read a book review. Perhaps Santa will bring me a copy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 Heard this guy talking about his book on radio 4 last week - sounds a really good read. I'll have to ask Mrs Santa too, Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derekc Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 I too read a good review and if I understand it correctly, a goodly proportion of Christmas music is firmly rooted in the tradition - which I sort of suspected given the number of 6/8 tunes. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1496555.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_12_20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chas Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 I too read a good review and if I understand it correctly, a goodly proportion of Christmas music is firmly rooted in the tradition - which I sort of suspected given the number of 6/8 tunes. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1496555.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_12_20 Sounds like a good read. Lots of village carols still around, of course. The Sheffield carolling tradition must be the most famous. See localcarols.org.uk and villagecarols.org.uk . They sing local carols in Dunster. Half a dozen were collected from Jim Small in Somerset, though not much sung now. Our own Chris Timson and Anne Gregson lead a band which plays for carolling every year in Bradford-on Avon - they do Sheffield and Dunster stuff among others, singing in pubs, not churches. http://www.concertina.info/wordpress2/ And I've just posted another local carol on ThOTM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rod Posted December 24, 2014 Author Share Posted December 24, 2014 Santa never fails me and has just delivered my copy of the book. A delightful little publication. Beautifully printed and bound in the classic tradition. Well illustrated. Excellent typographic design. What more could I have wished for. Something to treasure. Now to get on and read it. ! Rod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian brown Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 I enjoyed it too - makes you realise just how responsible the Victorians were for quite a chunk of "the tradition". Adrian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StuartEstell Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 A similar thought occurred to me when finally getting round to reading the introductory chapters of Stan Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas - large amounts of maritime work songs also date from the 19th century, it seems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chas Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 A similar thought occurred to me when finally getting round to reading the introductory chapters of Stan Hugill's Shanties of the Seven Seas - large amounts of maritime work songs also date from the 19th century, it seems. And only about 40 year of that century: According to A.L. Lloyd: "By the eighteen-thirties (ship-owners) were finding that men heaved and hauled better if they sang at work." He adds: "the practice of shanty-singing as we know it best emerged during the American-dominated packet-ship days of, roughly, 1830-1850, and it reached its peak in the British-dominated clipper-ship era of 1855-1870. Regarding the introduction of steamers, he states: "By 1975, the clippers were scuffling for a living; their way of working was out of date; the creative days of the sea-shanty were over." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 My wife Anne wrote a dissertation on Christmas carols as part of her final year music degree (she got a first class honours, thanks for asking) and you can find it here: http://www.concertina.info/carols/files/the_english_christmas_carol.pdf. The reason she chose this as a subject was the experience we have had in bringing village carols to pubs in Bradford in Avon. This all started a few years back when a group of us decided to see if we could bring something like the Sheffield tradition of pub carols to our town. There was me and Anne and another guy representing folk musos and three leaders of local community choirs. We chose some carols from the Sheffield tradition plus more carols from Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire that Anne researched. Anne and I organised a band from our muso contacts and the choir leaders taught the carols to their choirs and we arranged with a couple of pubs to come in sing on Sunday afternoons in December and waited to see what happened.Well the result exceeded all expectations as the pubs got crowded beyond belief and the singing was loud, enthusiastic and exciting. As an aside religion is not an issue in this - it's all about the joy of the music itself. From there we haven't looked back. We've just had our fifth year and all the carol sings have been an absolute joy.Sorry to go at length about this but it's important to me. If you're interested the web site I built to support it all is here, complete with recordings and video. Here on Soundcloud is one of the carols I recorded a couple a couple of years back, the Dunster Carol from Somerset. I think it catches the atmosphere rather well. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jody Kruskal Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 I listened to your Dunster carol. What a jolly time you must have had. Delicious! Here is a link to the song for those who want to sing along. http://www.joe-offer.com/folkinfo/songs/807.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Thanks for that, Jody, it's a lovely carol and the sentiment is spot on. If anyone wants to investigate further there is a good bibliography at the end of Anne's dissertation. I'd particularly recommend Glyn Court's Carols of the Westcountry. For myself, I'm going to follow up the original recommendation of Christmas Carols - From Village Green to Church Choir by Andrew Gant that started the whole thread off. Completist that Anne is she'll be very interested in this. Thank you, Rod. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann-p Posted January 11, 2015 Share Posted January 11, 2015 (edited) We have village carol singing in Worcestershire where I live, at the village shop that used to be on the green,(now closed) but has now moved to be a community shop nearby at the village hall. Singers then move to one of the local houses and then to one of the local pubs. Backbone of the singers is Community choir and Church choir members who keep the village residents on track! Carols are, unfortunately, mostly from the "traditional" type sung in church or schools, not what we would call folk carols which is a pity I think. It still goes down well. There's no instrumental accompaniment to this We also had carol singers going around all the houses before Christmas in my home village in Herefordshire, It's a long time ago now, but was a regular feature then. Edited January 11, 2015 by Ann-p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now