In the Bleak Midwinter

Or something like that

I was a church choir director for about a decade. I can’t do more than pick out notes on a piano with one finger, I don’t know how to be a conductor, and I never took a music course in high school or college. But I do know how to sing and sung in choirs for much of my life until recently.

Fortunately, the gig was two doors away from the Pink House, and Eric, the pianist/organist I would be working with, was wonderful. We saw eye to eye on everything including my love of songs written in a minor key.

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The Loneliest Places is a reader-supported publication. All subscribers - free or paid - can see every post. However, $5/month would help me collect more tunes written in a minor key.

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The choir was robust during those years - we could even sing pieces that had four voice parts when push came to shove. Of course Christmas and Easter were the big seasons and we worked on choral cantatas for a couple of months before each of the big days.

The little congregation was so appreciative of our efforts. Each Sunday, after the anthem, Jane Fellows would stand up and thank the choir for the beautiful music. Although she left this world many years ago, each time I enter the church I glance at the last pew on the right-hand side where she always sat.

I pored over the Methodist hymnal, finding and marking every hymn I liked, then, most weeks, the choir would rehearse and sing one of these hymns for an anthem. I’d talk about intonation and blending our voices, being mindful of tempo, and making sure we all knew what the hymn was about so we could sing with intention.

I was not a “nice” choir director. If someone wasn’t at rehearsal, they couldn’t sing the anthem. I explained that we all needed to take pride in what we were doing, which meant coming to rehearsals. I also said that choir was not a democratic body, and that I was clearly in charge. When I think back on this, I always laugh because many of my family members were in the choir and this bossiness did not surprise them one bit.

One hymn I loved and made the choir sing every Christmas season was In the Bleak Midwinter, words by Christina Rossetti with music by Gustav Holst. Take a listen to the Royal Choral Society singing this haunting 19th-century tune. This is how the Freeville United Methodist Church Choir sounded . . . in my head.

When we sang this carol, my mind saw images of our countryside that can be bleak and beautiful at the same time. Snow-covered fields edged with bare-limbed hardwood trees. Back roads with snow blowing across them in the open spots. Snow swirling down Main Street of the little village.