Advent: Thank You For The Music

When I first moved to London, I was naive about the difference between Christmas carols and Advent carols and, to be honest, I was quite ignorant of the breadth of music in both areas. For me, as I guess is the case for many, Christmas music was a small canon of Christian Hymns and secular hollywood-ish songs. However, there is a lot more to the music of this season than the
Carols In the Domain approved songlist.

Last night I had the chance to explore that richness a little at the Royal Philharmonic’s Christmas Concert at the Cadogan Hall here in Chelsea. From a performance point of view, the highlight of the night was Mark Chambers Counter Tenor work in Vivaldi’s Gloria. However, it was fascinating to hear, for the first time Finzi’s In Terra Pax.

Truth is, you could visit any major city in Europe at this time and find a great wealth of lesser known classical music that reflects upon the themes of Christmas and Advent. Moreover, you could visit a lot of cities and hear Jazz and of course, Gospel musicians performing new works written in reponse to this season as well. It is quite a huge canon of music that is waiting there for you to explore at this time.

[tags] Advent, Christmas [/tags]