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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us December 24, 2005 Carols: The sound of the season By Robert H. Miller Special to the Tidings Care to come for a stroll down Memory Lane? It’s the time of year to sing a song of Christmas. I’m going on 86, but my memories are sharp and clear, and there’s been a lot of music in my life. My mother was a professional singer being groomed for grand opera by her voice tutor, and I as a little boy would sit in the drawing room listening to her practice the scales and grapple with difficult passages in some of the songs. But she had no “grand” aspirations. Her delight was operetta, especially “The Merry Widow” and “The Dollar Princess.” As for my father, he was a classical pianist who suddenly began to replace Chopin with the scores of musical comedies such as “The Desert Song.” And then it was my turn. Each Christmas, Santa strove to awaken my latent musical talent by including a violin or a trumpet or a barrel organ in my pillow case. In the end, my parents signed me up for piano lessons under the Curwen Method. I continued the learning process throughout the years. Come Christmas, they would go round the neighborhood singing carols — noels, as the French call them — with my sister and I in tow. This door-to-door visitation that had flourished in Britain in the late 19th century as a pleasurable pursuit was destined to deteriorate too often into what the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music calls “petty begging.” And it drily adds: “In every district little children in groups paraded from doorstep to doorstep, from the end of November onwards, building up a Christmas fund by the extortion of what may fairly be called ‘hush money.’” Carols, by the way, were prevalent in Europe around the year 1000. I love the traditional performance of carols, say, in York Minster. It brings to mind the Rev. R.H. Barham’s endearment: “And the little singing-boys — dear little souls! In nice clean faces and nice white stoles.” In 1932, when I came home from boarding school for the “hols” (Christmas), my mother came back one day with a Brunswick recording of Bing Crosby singing: “Please” from the movie “The Big Broadcast.” She played it over and over and over. It’s a wonder the gramophone spring didn’t just conk out from sheer exhaustion, though I thought my sister came close to bursting out, “Oh, please — not again!” Bing impressed me to the degree that in the ’40s and ’50s, I became a collector of his records. In another movie, “Holiday Inn,” he introduced the timeless and legendary Oscar-winning song, “White Christmas.” Irving Berlin, who wrote the song, hated the holiday. Yet he wrote an eloquent and poignant introduction that is rarely sung, “There’s never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A.” Thinking about it now, I recall how I literally got my feet wet when I experienced my first California-style Christmas in 1961. The sun was blazing down and I found myself standing in a backyard swimming pool, along with my hosts and other guests singing carols and seasonal ditties. A white Christmas would have been most acceptable. Surely, one of the most beautiful Christmas songs is “Silent Night,” and every time I hear it I am back in England in 1940. When I was just 16, I applied to join the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve — I so much wanted to fly — but could not even be considered until I was 18. By September, 1939, Britain was at war with Germany, and I received an official notice that I had been selected for service in the RAF. After my interview, I was told to continue my work (I was apprenticed to a London journalist) and to go to night school to brush up my mathematics — you know, how many beans make five. So I went to the London County Council school in Brixton and signed on for German lessons as well. And what did our German teacher do the first lesson? Had us sing the Joseph Mohr/Franz Gruber classic in German, making us carefully articulate “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” Often were the times, as I walked home, with the wail of air raid sirens, the drone of planes, the crack of ack-ack, and the thud of bombs in my ears that I wondered would the heavenly peace we had been singing about ever descend on us. When I retired to Ashland in 1985, I was overjoyed to find that carolers were abroad at Christmas, and I joined them eagerly. At first, it was a small group from church singing a capella that visited certain streets where the residents came out and treated us to hot chocolate and cookies. Then I became one of a group led by a young guitarist and his wife that visited nursing homes and care centers around Ashland and Medford. What an experience! It astonished and touched me to find how responsive these old folks were in the wheelchairs lining the corridors. Some would smile, some cry; some sing out, some mouth the words; and some gratefully grasp our hand. How was it that some who had lost their memory, could yet remember a carol? It is noteworthy that the Tidings for some years issued a “Holiday Songbook” for Christmas and Chanukah, but no longer. And the hymnology I have lists twenty carols under the heading “Incarnation.” On the classical side, of course, there are Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” and Gian Carlo Menotti’s one-act opera, “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Andrea Bocelli in 1999 recorded a variety of “Sacred Arias” with stirring singing. And where will I be this Christmas Day? Not standing in a swimming pool singing carols, for sure. Standing, rather, at the lower door of Ashland Christian Fellowship’s Upper Room to welcome all who come for the free Christmas dinner it provides, continuing a tradition of over 25 years. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams