ADAM LAY YBOUNDEN

Last night, my friend Gareth and I went to the town’s concert hall to see Harry Christophers’ vocal ensemble, The Sixteen, perform a collection of sacred Christmas music.

The chandeliers dimmed. The great mahogany doors were closed and the crowd were hushed, all eyes to the stage.

The concert hall really is grand. Relief pillars are embossed with ornate, gold filagree, before 
bending into arches that meet each other like sculpted porticos. Above, the roof is lined with figures, Olympians holding the roof with arms behind their heads, and looking down on the hall. A thin etched rail, then great curved windows, each reflecting the light slightly differently as they angle up to the delicately embossed ceiling.

The dimmed chandeliers hang on gold beams from the panels, bedecked with twenty or thirty candle-shaped bulbs. It’s long since they held candles of course but it’s still easy to imagine the flicker and the smell of tallow.

A single balcony sweeps around three sides of the concert hall. If you’ve been to an old church you’ll know the layout - the U-shaped arrangement, facing the choir stalls and the famous Father Willis Organ at the front.

The Willis Organ dominates the concert hall; a huge instrument of dark wood and enormous pipes, as tall as the ceiling. I’ve heard it only once. Either side of the Willis Organ, between the steps of the empty choir stalls, two golden lamp stands stand guard.

In front of the organ, illuminated by the spot lighting, the plain wooden apron of the stage reaches out toward the seated audience.

A chair, a harp, and a music stand.

Then, applause. I heard my own percussive clap and the snap of hands around me intermingling into the ocean of applause in the hall. Men in tails and ladies in sparkling long dresses were emerging from the bowels of the organ, where indeed I remember, is the corridor to the changing rooms.

Each of them carried a smart black folder. The gentlemen at the back, the ladies twinkling in green and black at the front. Harry Christophers CBE, grey-haired and tall, stood with his back to the audience after the applause faded, ready to conduct. Silence returned for a moment.

And then they sang.

Oh Walton and Britten and Holst and Posten! They sang medieval carols, with drum and tambour, they sang exquisite tunes of layered sound that made your hairs tingle. This I Have Done For My True Love, Adam lay ybounden, There is No Rose, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. All the hits! It was thrilling and beautiful in equal measure.

It occurred to me that liking this kind of thing is a little unusual. Over the road in O’Neills, a different kind of party was blaring among the flashing festive lights. It would be ever so snobbish to say that one thing is better than the other, but I do get that what Gareth and I saw and heard was a thousand miles away from Wizzard and Mariah Carey.

But it’s not better; it’s just different. And it would be equally as snobbish I think to insist that we should all love The Pogues and Band Aid and be forced to sing along. It’s just different that’s all. Like coloured lights or white, like outside decorations that belt out to the world, “IT’S CHRIIIISTMAS!” or the subtle joy of a warm fire and a woollen stocking.

The real joy is that we get to keep Christmas together in whatever way brings us love and happiness and fun. We live in a world where Adam lay ybounden in the concert hall on one side of the road, and O’Neills is on the other.

Isn’t that great?