A Boy Was Born

Theme and Variations

I first sang Benjamin Britten’s A Boy Was Born a number of years ago in a wildly ambitious concert. I remember vividly turning and grinning happily at the tenor next to me (conductor

Cole Bendall

as it happens) once we got through a particularly challenging section, both of us resisting the urge to high five for getting it right when it mattered.

It’s an amazing piece of music, and one that has stuck with me since that introduction. It appeals to my love of early twentieth-century modernism: that crossword-puzzle feeling of cleverness you get from untangling the references and meta-textuality in reading someone like T.S. Elliot or D.H. Lawrence.

Theme and Variations, spread over seven movements, it has callbacks, leitmotifs, wordplay and an amazing, overriding sense of CHRISTMAS - in all caps. Snow on snow, Dickensian trudging through ghosts of the past to the manger, the wise men and Herod, gifts and Hosanna. Noel!

Given the opportunity, I jumped at the chance to programme it with my choir Calton Consort. Echoing the apocryphal aphorism of Leonard Bernstein, we had a plan, and not enough time: For all that it’s an amazing piece of music, it’s also fiendishly difficult in places. Composed by a 19-year-old Britten, it requires a super high standard, with the Herod variation and Noel! being particularly challenging. The former for it’s speed and harmonic complexity, and the latter for its speed and its length.

I’d decided early on to cheat where I could. Firstly, instead of trebles, I opted for a single soprano soloist. I don’t have the links with the local cathedral, nor the experience of working with children. Secondly, I brought an accompanist into our rehearsals for as long as possible, to help give a sense of the harmonic transformations. It also meant, it necessary, I could have carried that through into the performance where necessary. But, the choir are good - they’re fast readers, and they like detail. They relished the chance to get their teeth into it, and as rehearsals progressed I saw the same things in them I’d felt before: The shared knowing looks of sections mastered; the grins of handing the wandering ‘ah’ motif of Three Kings from one section to another like a Christmas present.

My present to myself was to make 7 videos to try and market the concert - a series of short (1-2 minute) essays on each theme or variation. My own response to Sing the Score or Listening In. I had a great time putting them together, along with studying the score myself, scratching that crossword-puzzle itch.

It wasn’t plain sailing. We were working on Herod and Noel! until the last minute. I was my worst self in that rehearsal - irritable and sarcastic where I should have continued to be encouraging and passionate. Sharing the love of it, the detail of it, instead of being stressed and grumpy.

The concert itself was a triumph, however. Herod was masculine and angular, Lullay Jesu loving and legato, the Bleak Mid-Winter heartbreaking. And Noel! was exciting, complex and glorious.

In the finale of the finale a new version of the theme emerges, and it’s taken on by the tenors and bases into a rich Hosanna (bar 373 for those keeping score). In rehearsals with piano it had been fine, but once the training-wheels had been removed it had become a problem. The harmonic change from the written-but-not-really D major to the written-but-not-really C major (Ab major add 9, to Eb major 6 to C major 7, to…. it’s exhausting, on purpose!) were causing trouble and the finale was falling flat. It was a worry, in a sea of worries. So much can go wrong with this piece: so much of it depends on successful handoffs, your colleagues giving you the good stuff so you can do your bit and hand it on. Once slip, and it’s curtains.

On the night, as the moment arrived, the first Hosanna in the tenors and bases was glorious. A beautiful, perfect Ab6 that actually caused my heart to swell three sizes. I knew, from then on, we were safe. There’s still pages to go until the end, but that moment there was the new climax for me.

Relief, mixed with pride, mixed with honest joy. Hosanna.

I’ve assembled my little essays together into one video now the concert is over, and graciously the Sixteen (who’s amazing recording I have used) have not copyright struck it. I hope it finds other souls who have fallen in love with this fiendish, gorgeous music.

Merry Christmas.