A Sample of my Carols
The three carols listed here were published by Encore Publications in 2006, but they were written a few years before that. The Way of Paradox and Snow were both written in 2003, and Alchemy was written a year later in 2004. I would not want these works to be taken as statements of faith. (I am more Buddhist than Christian.) In writing them, my approach was academic rather than personal. I wanted to see if it were possible to write a Christmas carol in such a way that it avoided the usual repetition of the two Gospel narratives, but instead focused more on the core theological meaning of the Christian idea of the ‘Incarnation’.
The teacher with whom I collaborated, Neil Porter-Thaw, had had no experience of composition when we started this project, just as I had had no experience of writing lyrics. So we really didn’t know what we were doing. However, looking at these pieces again, now, all these years later, I don’t think that we did too badly at all. I could be wrong about this, of course, but, either way I don’t care because I remember having an absolute blast working on them.
As an incidental point of interest, I wrote the words to, The Way of Paradox when stuck in a traffic jam one afternoon on the A10. I wrote Snow during a free period at work when I should have been marking, and I wrote Alchemy during a school staff meeting. That’s the beauty of writing. You can do it anywhere, anytime, under any conditions, and nobody ever knows what you’re up to. It is the greatest form of escapism, ever.
Summon the scholars,
Commission all views,
Re-write the textbooks,
Consult every Muse.
The laws of our governance
No longer hold sway,
The world has been altered
On this Christmas day.
The grammatical I
No longer exists,
Three is now One
And no logic persists.
No compass direction
Gives orientation,
All solitary travel
Has lost its duration.
The Earth has changed orbit
Through one act of love,
All order’s upturned,
What was low is above.
All age is suspended:
Each calendar date,
Time’s Scythe and its Glass
Lie smashed at His Gate.
Tell all whom you see
In the town and the street
Of this New Dispensation,
Tell all whom you meet.
This new wondrous world
Is to me quite unknown,
But I know through unknowing
We’re no longer alone.
Summon the scholars,
Commission all views,
Re-write the textbooks,
Consult every Muse.
The laws of our governance
No longer hold sway,
The world has been altered
On this Christmas day.
Words reproduced here by kind permission of Encore Publications.
Recording: Ely Cathedral, December 2003
Conductor: Neil Porter-Thaw (composer)
Tenor: Peter North
Choir: King’s Voices (King’s Ely Junior)
Pianist: Nicola Sivier
It came in the stealth of the night,
In the silence of a perfect conspiracy,
With the touch of a thief it crept softly
Leaving nothing behind but a mystery.
It stilled and becalmed all before it
Before furtively hiding its treasure
In the shroud of a white untold secret
Beyond all comprehension or measure.
We woke to a blinding concealment
And a deafening absence of sound,
Nothing was left but the debris
Of the plunder that lay all around.
The staccato sharp crunch of my footsteps
Imprinted their way out of sight
And remained as the final deception
As the trail of the thief of the night.
The world had been changed whilst we slept,
Transformed overnight from above,
As a birth once did in Palestine,
Not by intrigue or guile, but through love.
Words reproduced here by kind permission of Encore Publications.
Recording: Ely Cathedral, December 2003
Conductor: Neil Porter-Thaw (composer)
Choir: King’s Voices (King’s Ely Junior)
Pianist: Nicola Sivier
The sculptor chips stone into form,
The painter turns oil into light,
The dancer translates every language to movement,
The lawyer discerns wrong from right.
The writer distils life from ink,
The athlete makes fluid the race,
The clockmaker measures invisible moments,
The architect captures the space.
Such artistry fills us with wonder,
As fragments on Earth of God’s plan,
When once in a Bethlehem stable,
The Word came incarnate as Man,
So abandon your dallies with magic,
Such hokum is lifeless and cold,
Real alchemy burns this Christmas,
Transforming the world into gold.
The tailor cuts cloth into style,
The gardener fashions the ground,
The geographer scales down the world to a ball,
Composers can journey through sound.
The cook conjures food into flavour,
The cleaner buffs old into new,
The scientist sees hidden patterns and laws,
The actor becomes me and you.
Such artistry fills us with wonder,
As fragments on Earth of God’s plan,
When once in a Bethlehem stable,
The Word came incarnate as Man,
So abandon your dallies with magic,
Such hokum is lifeless and cold,
Real alchemy burns this Christmas,
Transforming the world into gold.
Words reproduced here by kind permission of Encore Publications.
Recording: Ely Cathedral, December 2004
Conductor: Neil Porter-Thaw (composer)
Choir: King’s Voices (King’s Ely Junior)
Organist: Graham Griggs