In my small way, I've travelled about in 2005 - Italy, America, Spain, France, Eastern Europe, Germany, Ireland, Scandanavia. At the year's close, though, I'm in England. At the end of each dirt track, another quiet churchyard, every one a Little Gidding:
"
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat...
There are other places
Which also are the world's end...
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England."
Christmas is a time for homecomings, and so it is for me, jolting past the mulchy hedgerows, English music in my ears. Here, now and in England, are Four Quartets' mystical poets; our old carols' green maple tree (lullay, lullay); most of all, A Ceremony of Carols.
Each time I play this truly great, English music, it's richer and more moving. The plainsong opening conjures not only the real choirboys from the back of the church, but all those choristers before them and the ones to come, in granite Northern monasteries, and hidden saxon chapels. Then come the ancient texts: the childlike excitement of 'Wolcum Yole'; 'There is No Rose''s sophisticated evocation of the mysteries of the Nativity; 'That Yonge Child''s hoarse nightingale nonetheless singing beside Mary's enchanting 'Balulalow' lullaby.
All the hope and joy and innocence at the root of Christmas is here, made more powerful by the ecclesiastical - realised, as ever in Britten, by the musical - rigour. Middle English poetry is not afraid of spiritual difficulty. I've never read a ME text that doesn't feel the complexities of Christian doctrine, the difficulties of reconciling real and spiritual life, the shifty relationship between art and religion. Whether secular or sacred, it is profoundly honest writing, refusing tidy conclusions. In a neat end's place comes mystery, wonder, faith. Leave we all this werdly mirth, and follow we this joyful birth. / Transeamus, transeamus.
And there we have it, in Britten's music. As difficult as his texts, complex, wise to the freezing winter night and the wonder therein: Christmas's miracle of a virgin birth to deliver us all from sin. The marvellous babe turns the freezing stable into a "prince's court" simply by existing. There is no other reason. It's doubly amazing when you consider the circumstances under which A Ceremony of Carols was composed - Britten's rough, March, mid-war transatlantic crossing back to England, looking forward certainly to hostility and possibly imprisonment for his conscientious objections, and where he was also reading Crabbe's The Borough - which, of course, inspired another incredible work, but one more understandably connected.
It is good, not always to understand, and to marvel instead: at beauty and wholeness, at innocence. It must exist in this world too, or we wouldn't feel it, and we wouldn't come back to it, year after year, to conclude each year.
Res miranda, res miranda.
Gaudeamus, gaudeamus.
