It’s half-past-nine on Christmas Eve, 2017, and we’re still here. The world still lives and breathes. Eight hours ahead of us in the U.S., Donald Trump will be waking up in an hour, all excited about what naughty Santa has brought him, and preparing his tantrum if he hasn’t got what he wants, but we are still here. It’s been a funny old year, but we’ve almost made it through it.
In Danceswithcats Towers, we have a fire lit, and we have put the tree up. It’s a somewhat reduced tree this year, as we have to raise it out of reach of Tia, who is not routinely destructive but tends to express her curiosity by eating things. Still, it looks lovely, and its presence has made me feel, at last, that sense of security and warmth that is loaded onto the mid-winter festival.
Each year, my anticipation of Christmas has to war with the clamour of obligation and commercial pressure that Christmas imposes. We spent yesterday in a bit of a panic shop, as we lost the previous day to a strange adventure: I had, we think, given myself nicotine poisoning making e-cigarette liquid and passed out three times in twenty four hours. Doctors don’t like to hear about fifty-year old men passing out, and so we spent several hours in A&E as I was given blood-pressure tests, blood sugar tests and an E.C.G. All perfect, I’m proud to report, but I’m fairly sure the doctor who interviewed me has me marked as a drug addict.
Anyway, the fridge is full, our presents to one another are wrapped, our cards to our neighbours have been distributed and we have finally relaxed. We don’t put up Christmas decorations until Christmas Eve: I’m fussy about that. I hate the way seasonal decorations gather dust over a festival extended by commercial exploitation: twelve days is quite long enough to have silly lights on a plastic tree, and it gives Christmas Eve its own purpose.
We have also had the Sting Christmas album on for the first time this year and it sounds as good as it has every year for almost as long as we have been together. I am not a particular fan of his, but Amanda has a soft spot for him and I bought her the album the year we married. We played it to death that Christmas and then put it away, not to be touched again until the following year and we have continued to do that every Christmas since. It is a very beautiful thing: mysterious, familiar and old.
Amanda had an early start this morning, so she could make biscuits and chocolates as presents for friends and family which she distributed this afternoon. She’s off to bed now but I’m staying up to go to midnight mass in an hour or so. I’ve got another favourite album on: An Evening With Bach1 by Voices of Music.2This is an album I had forgotten that I owned. I’d downloaded it when I was a member of the wonderful-but-odd Magnatune.com.3 I paid a monthly fee and had access to its entire library and this was one of the gems.4 I was reminded of it this evening as I was cooking supper and doing some prep for tomorrow. I had the radio on and Radio 3 had an evening of Bach, including a Bach-themed episode5 of their wonderful series, Words and Music.6 It included a snippet of Schlummert Ein from the cantata Ich Habe Genug, BMV 82:7I can’t tell you how beautiful I think this little aria is. It is both sad and wondrous, vast in tone and yet a small, modest piece. It has the same underlying awe of God that marks his Masses and Oratorio and yet, it is just a single voice, singing for only a few minutes; a few repeated phrases and some very contained ornamentation in the string quartet accompaniment.
Unfortunately, they haven’t posted their recording of the aria on their excellent You tube channel so, to hear their performance, you’ll have to buy the CD or join Magnatune, which is now very expensive, to get a download. Most of the Youtube versions of the aria seem to be sung by tenors, which I don’t like the sound of at all, but there is this one by Janet Baker8 (Warning! Youtube, so no privacy protections whatsoever). It’s with a full orchestra and it’s all a bit richer and more flowery than the Voices of Music recording, but I love Janet Baker’s voice and the music, speaking as it does of the longing for God with simple perfection, transcends the differences.
Have a happy, blessed and peaceful Christmas.
- http://kunaki.com/accounting/ShowproductDetail.asp?PID=PX00Y2213S [↩]
- https://voicesofmusic.org/ [↩]
- http://magnatune.com/ [↩]
- http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/voicesofmusic-bach?song=2 [↩]
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k68p7 [↩]
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x35f [↩]
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_habe_genug%2C_BWV_82 [↩]
- https://youtu.be/7hutjTQiiMw [↩]
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