Carols are as much a part of Christmas as mince pies and decorating the tree, but the sight of carollers in the street seems to have vanished like a snowman at spring thaw.
Festively dressed singers holding lanterns aloft as snow swirls around them have been consigned to greetings cards, while most youngsters would shudder at the thought of attempting Away in a Manger for the neighbours.
Thankfully, choirs such as the Ythan Singers, based in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, are keeping the carol-singing tradition alive with their Christmas concerts, and while they won’t be out in the snow, there may be mince pies.
Choir chairman just loves singing
Brian Wilkins joined Ythan Singers in 2007 having been “roped in” by his wife Hazel.
The choir started in 1980 and today has more than 30 members.
“Hazel is not quite a founder member but she joined in the late 1980s,” said Brian. “We still have one founder member that sings with us.”
Brian, 76, was rector at Ellon Academy and is now is semi-retired, teaching pharmacy and nursing students at RGU along with Hazel.
“I love singing,” said Brian, who is choir chairman.
“Okay, I’m not the best bass in the world, but Hazel and I do some duet singing as well. We take lessons at the North-East School of Music.
“Music is one of the main hobbies we share. We sing in another choir, the Bach choir in Aberdeen, and we have our own music so we’re quite heavily involved in music one way or another. It’s part of our life.
“My daughter became a musician too, partly due to Hazel’s influence – she certainly didn’t get her talent from me!”
Asked if you need to be able to read music to be in the choir, Brian said: “Well, we are a four-part choir with soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
“The bass line very often is nothing like the tune, so if you sing something like Little Town of Bethlehem, a carol in four parts, we have to stick to a bass line, we can’t sing the lovely melody.
“There are not many four-part choirs around now because you have to have someone who has a fantastic ear.
Four-part harmony choir
“Some people can listen to something even though they can’t read music and within listening two or three times they can sing it.
“Really to be in a four-part harmony choir, you need a very basic understanding of music.
“Morag Simpson is our musical director. She has been with us for five or six years and she’s brilliant.
“She’s preparing us for the Christmas music that we’re doing on December 10.
“Almost all of it is four-part singing. If it was everyone singing in unison, where everyone is singing the same notes, that’s not nearly as much of a challenge as having four distinct parts, providing harmony and where everyone’s got to be singing in the right line.
“What has to happen quite often is, instead of us charging away and everyone singing, she will do what they call ‘note bashing’.
“So she’ll say ‘hang on basses, you’re not right’ and then the accompanist will play it out on the piano and we’ll have to follow it.
“A lot of it is just trying to get the four parts correct and then getting us to sing those correctly together.
Finding the time can be tricky
“Four parts is probably a bit less common. Perhaps because maybe fewer people read music and also, one of the big challenges is trying to get younger people involved in the choir.
“If you’ve got a job, a family and a mortgage and you’re having to work flat out over the whole week, finding time to come to something like a choir can be difficult.
“We’ve been quite successful at recruiting. We could always do with more men, but we’ve kept going and we still have a genuine four-part choir.”
He pointed out that Stonehaven and Peterhead have four-part choirs and there are “a couple in Aberdeen, but if you go back 30 years there was a lot more than that”.
Brian doesn’t hesitate when asked to name his favourite carol – it’s In The Bleak Midwinter, the Harold Darke version.
“It sounds similar, but it’s written for four parts and the first verse is done as a soprano solo and I just love it. It just stands out to me above others.”
Is he looking forward to the carol concert at Ellon Parish Church?
Money raised for charity
“Oh absolutely, we have two big events every year. We have a big charity concert in summer and last year we had about 250 people there, so we made over £2,000 for charity.
“The Christmas concert we do in the Parish Church in Ellon is a big event in the local community and extremely well supported.
“It’s quite special to sing it in the church. You sing on a Sunday afternoon and there’s a coloured window in the church and so when it’s getting to twilight it’s very atmospheric.
“It’s not quite a Victorian Christmas card scene, but it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck a bit, especially when it’s a carol you really enjoy singing. It’s just a lovely experience.
Rehearsals start in September
“What always seems odd is that you start rehearsing at the end of September so when you’re in the church hall there’s still a little bit of daylight and you’re singing Christmas carols.
“But it all comes together when you get through to December and you’ve got the proper atmosphere in the church.”
Seventy years of singing
Husband and wife Peter and Frances Morrison, both 78, have been singing for “let’s say 70 years”, said Peter.
“I started at primary school in Bucksburn and did some at secondary school, then none for a while because I did more manly things like rowing!”
Peter, a retired IT expert, and Frances, a former maths teacher, moved to Newburgh around 15 years ago.
“I was invited to the Ythan Singers fairly quickly, because of course, there’s a big shortage of men, especially tenors,” said Peter.
“Frances joined several years later because they were fully subscribed with sopranos and altos.
“It’s been great for a wide variety of things. We meet lots of lovely people and our conductors and accompanists are always very inspiring.
“It’s a wonderful diversion from rowing, which I was extremely involved in, and work of course.”
‘Music was a great thing to do’
“In secondary school we had at least two music lessons a week and the people we had to teach us were inspiring.
“They offered us a wide range of things to listen to and play, for example the Bolero, which has that fabulous rhythm.
“The teacher would play that and ask us to repeat it. We found it very difficult but we managed it eventually.
“Things like that brought it home that music was a great thing to do.
“We’ve had some wonderful leaders but you learn you’re not as good as you thought you were. If you sing too loud, the tuning goes off.”
Does Peter think anyone can join a choir?
“The quick answer is yes, anyone can join a choir and it really depends on the individual how well they do.
“Some people can hear a tune and once they pick it up they can sing it and that’s lovely.
“Most people have voices that will blend in.
“Very few people have a horrible croaky voice. Most can meld in, and if you’re enjoying it and are prepared to learn and are not trying to be dominant, it’s fine.”
Silent Night is a crowd-pleaser
His favourite carol?
“We know hundreds and they’re all lovely, but if you ask me my favourite I’d say Silent Night because it’s very simple.
“The words are easy, the tune is lovely and it means a lot to lots of people.”
“We do a wide range of things at concerts, but there are old favourites.
“We often do Silent Night in German and the words are even nicer. Audiences also like Away in a Manger and Once in Royal David’s City.”
Did he go carolling as a youngster?
“Yes, especially at the youth club in Bucksburn. We used to go around and do strange things!” he laughed.
“We used to do miracle plays which is not something you hear of at all nowadays.
“There was a wee performance and some singing, but even now, although people don’t go around the streets doing it, we’re involved in switching on the Christmas tree lights outside the church.”
Ythan Singers has “one or two Doric experts” said Peter, including P&J columnist Gordon Hay who translated the Bible into Doric.
Peter said: “He has also developed a Doric Messiah. One of the main words is ‘hallelujah’ and the Doric he has for that is ‘God be thankit’.”
Peter believes carol singing is something that “brings pleasure to a lot of people, the choir and the audiences,” and added: “We do it for people to enjoy and they come along in fairly large numbers, which is encouraging.”
Making new friends
Frances Morrison has been in choirs since she was a child and after moving to Newburgh had to wait to join Ythan Singers “because they had enough women”.
She said: “I enjoy it very much. It’s a lovely choir to be part of.
“We meet every Monday (at Ellon Parish Church Kirk Centre) during school term. We always do one performance around June and one or more in December.
“All our profits go to a charity which is chosen each time.
“One of the benefits has been making new friends. Moving to a new locality as we did, we got to know a lot of people with like interests so it’s been really good.
“We’ve been practising the carols since September. Certainly the chorus enjoy carols, we enjoy singing them, but I think also there’s a big turnout at our carol concert because there are some joining in from the congregation with the ones that they know and it always seems to go well.
“Our conductor Morag Simpson is a lot of fun and we’ve always got at least one fun item in it. This year’s is called The 12 Days After Christmas.
“We’ve sung it before, it’s a spoof on The 12 Days of Christmas, but I’m not telling you any more!
“It’s all good fun and we’ve done things like we’ve had a dogs’ chorus, with all the men in dog ears. It always goes down well and I think the audience looks forward to something silly.”
Does Frances think carols put people in a Christmassy mood?
“Oh yes, but I think the Christmas mood has probably started long ago because there’s so much Christmas everywhere, all the shops and everything and not even in December.
“But yes, it does help and we always do some sort of catering like mince pies and squash and things like that for everybody, so they look forward to that as well.
Words stuck in our heads
“I’ve got a few favourite carols. The ones I love to see are things like Away in a Manger. When the children are singing that it always brings a tear to the eye.
“There are some fun carols as well. One of the composers we use a lot is John Rutter.
“He writes the most lovely carols so we’re doing a couple of his this time. Those are favourites of ours.
“One of the older carols I love is called Oh Little One Sweet. It’s got all sorts of harmonies in it and the voices merge and blend and it’s just lovely.”
Frances said it’s easy to remember carols as “the words are stuck in our heads”.
“We have sung carols for I don’t know how long,” she said, and added that the audience tends to sing along “only when they are invited to”.
She agrees you don’t see street carol singers any more.
“We’ve done it as well, but probably not for 20 years. I don’t think there’s been carol singing around Newburgh since we moved here.
“The old days of going to people’s doors and ringing the doorbell, those days have gone.
“It’s sad, but then again, maybe not.”
An Afternoon of Christmas Carols with Ythan Singers, Sunday December 10, Ellon Parish Church at 2.30pm, donations to charity at the door, no booking required, festive refreshments after the concert.
There is also a smaller concert at Logie Buchan Church for its annual service on Sunday December 3 at 3pm.
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