In the dead of night, all the world lay sleeping in the blanket of the dark

I've had the subject line of this post in my head for the last three days nonstop. Brownie points if you know what song it's from!

We've had three carol concerts now, with the last one to come tonight. They've been quite fun - not as silly as in previous years, but never mind. Actually, the second and third concerts were much more fun than the first, after we were exhorted to be more festive - I think we rose to the challenge! The orchestra did too - the second concert saw the welcome return of both the moving Santa hat on the second desk of the 2nd violins, and the brass standing up for their jazzy solo in Sleigh Ride; the third concert saw the horns standing, at last, to interrupt Sleigh Ride with a line of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (Sleigh Ride just sounds WRONG without that!)



The choir was quite depleted on Sunday - partly due to illness, partly due to people who'd always had other plans, and partly due to the extreme weather conditions. I can't remember the last time I saw so much snow in the city centre. This probably affected the audience too - there were lots of empty seats (rare for the carol concerts) and lots of people arrived late. A few of the orchestra were delayed as well - in fact the organist didn't arrive until the second half, so the first verse of Once in Royal had to be played on the piano.

Amy wins the prize for the most dedication to the spirit of Christmas, by the way - she left her sleighbells on her seat on Saturday night and they'd vanished when she went back for them fifteen minutes later... so she went out on Sunday morning and BOUGHT SOME MORE (from a shop I've never heard of, but it sounds lovely: Little Nut Tree Toys of Chorlton). There were quite a few sets of sleighbells being used by the alto section, in fact - I must try and get a photo of all of them together!

My favourite part of the concert (apart from Sleigh Ride, which is always great) was the bit when the Children's Choir was singing Babe of Bethlehem by Edmund Walters, and everyone else was asked to hum Away in a Manger in the last verse. It was a magical moment. I noticed that all the brass players (who don't play in that piece) were humming along too, with contented looks on their faces. Lovely!

There's been some debate in the alto section over which is the cutest member of the Children's Choir. We're torn between the dark-haired boy on the end of the front row, and the blondish bespectacled boy in the middle of the third row. Both of them are so engaged with their performance that it's difficult to look away from either of them. (The others in the choir are all great too, but these two are the ones who've caught our eye.)

The Youth Choir are sounding really good, too - in fact, better than they've sounded in years. There are fewer of them than there used to be, but they're really good. (Quality rather than quantity is our unofficial 2nd alto motto - on Sunday afternoon there were seven 2nd altos and twenty-three 1sts. Usually there are more of both, but the ratio is usually about the same - three times as many firsts as seconds.)

I didn't realise until yesterday that Petroc Trelawny, our presenter, has a blog on the Telegraph website. Looking back a few entries, I found a great post he wrote about our very own orchestra.

Talking of great posts, here's one by Chris Rowbury (From the Front of the Choir) about the connection between singing and our sense of self. It mentions the Alzheimer's Choir that Amy told me about the other day, plus all sorts of interesting related things.

On a similar subject, here's a BBC News article about how stroke patients were helped by Kenny Rogers songs.

And here's a fascinating one from the BBC News Magazine, about several unusual carol singing traditions in various parts of the UK.

A Telegraph article tells us why Christmas carols make the church feel nervous.

From Tom Service, news that the British Library has put parts of the autograph score of Messiah online. It didn't work when I tried it, though, so I lost interest.

Here's an article from BBC Music Magazine about how audiences are different in different countries.

The MEN tells us that both the Manchester Boys' Choir and the Manchester Girls' Choir have ceased to exist because the council will no longer fund them. The official reason is falling numbers (the girls' choir apparently only had six members), which makes it all the more impressive that our own children's choir had more than eighty members on stage this weekend at each concert. I wondered for a moment whether those two facts are connected, but I think the MBC and MGC were shrinking long before our children's choir was formed.

The MEN also tells us that the new yellow tram is now in operation. I'm quite excited about this - sad, I know!

I mentioned the Duel in the Pool that took place in Manchester this weekend. Unsurprisingly the USA won overall, but a local guy beat Michael Phelps!

I absolutely love this post (from Making Light) about the Christmas lights of Mousehole.

I also love the Astronomy Picture of the Day from Saturday - an aurora AND a meteor.

And finally, in case I don't get round to writing again in time, don't forget the NORAD Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve (especially if your kids have never seen it) and the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race on Boxing Day. And if the days start to merge into one another, Is It Christmas? will help :-)