[8] 77 Joy to the World

‘Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
----Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
----And heaven and nature sing,
--------And heaven and nature sing,
--------And heaven, and heaven and nature sing.’

Just a short one today, as I scrape together half an hour that isn’t filled with rehearsals, travelling, or indeed sleeping. So far I’ve had an excellent if busy day, and here at half-six it looks set to continue. I had an energetic lesson accompanying a female singer, then a musical theatre workshop in which the leader deconstructed my entire physicality – damning but instructive! Then I ran across campus to take part in an experiment to examine change in vocal performance as a result of stress; an experiment than involved intentionally placing myself in stressful situations (surprise sight-singing!) to measure the vocal response. After I’ve written this and drank my cup of tea, I shall be off to Bible-study, then on to a friend’s house for chilli.

The life of a music student is one of rehearsals on top of rehearsals. It’s like that for everybody; commitments accumulate, then clash, then don’t clash but that means that you have no time for food as you run between appointments so it’s probably worse like that anyway. When in a meeting, or rehearsal, or whatever, we’re always worrying about the next one; where is it, how do I get there, is there a vending machine en-route, is that clock 5 minutes slow?!

The carol I’ve chosen for today is quite a busy one. It starts off with that cascading, triumphant scale going down; throughout there are bouncy, fiddly dotted-rhythms; and even a call-and-response section between the men and women to further complicate matters. There’s a lot going on in just ten bars of music.

However, there is an oasis of calm in the third line (bars 5-6). ‘Let every heart prepare him room’ is going to be my motto for the coming few days. All of a sudden (in the arrangement I’m looking at, at least) we’re left in the relative simplicity of just the female voices. This change highlights the meaning of the words; the arranger is physically making space in the music – he is preparing room. In the scurrying scalic passages of our contrapuntal lives, can we make time and space for a pause? For a breath? For a tonic pedal? Perhaps I’m pushing the music analogy too far…

I’ve used this project as my own preparation of room; I’ve so far found it helpful to set aside one portion of every day to stop and think about something other than timetabling. And for that alone; thanks be to God!