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Re: Music for Christmas Eve Service

Author: Dutchy
Date: 2009-12-09 22:54

Lifelong Evangelical church-goer here, been Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, you name it.

What the congregation is going to be expecting, for a Christmas Eve service, is Christmas carols. Period.

Anything you can play will be fine. They don't expect fancy orchestral excerpts--what they expect is recognizable Christmas music, sacred, not secular (no "Up on the Housetop" or "Jingle Bells"; some conservative Christians are offended by the concept of "Santa in a church", so leave those songs out).

Iif you give them orchestral or "repertoire" excerpts, Telemann, Marcello, Bach, etc., no matter how beautifully played, there's going to be a percentage that won't "get it", and will sit there uncomfortably. What they're expecting is Christmas carols, plain and simple.

And actually this is good for you because there is nothing lovelier, in my experience, than a limpid unaccompanied oboe sending simple melodies out into what are usually the excellent acoustics of a church auditorium. Bonus points for showmanship if you can arrange to be up in a balcony over their heads where they can't see you, so the music floats down ethereally and they're not distracted by watching you play.

[True story: one Sunday night, after finishing a hymn, the music director paused a moment and looked over at us, the Orchestra (all four of us), as we put our instruments down, and said thoughtfully, "I was just looking at you, at your [he gestured at his mouth] at your, you know, mouths..." The Trumpet said, "You mean our embouchures?" "Yeah! Your embouchures! It's neat, watching how your mouths all go different..." So all during the hymn he'd been watching, fascinated, as the Flute, Oboe, Trumpet, and Baritone put their mouths and faces through various contortions, instead of focusing on the hymn.]

Choose the songs that have fairly complex, lyrical, and not too repetitious melodies. You would play it through twice, because once is not long enough to constitute a "piece", and more than twice, for unaccompanied instrument playing the melody, tends to make the audience restive. Small children playing at recitals play ALL the verses; you should not. Twice is good, twice is standard practice for this sort of thing. Play it through once to give them the idea ("Ah! he's playing 'Silent Night''), then a second time for appreciation ("Ah! He's playing 'Silent Night' very prettily"), then stop before you get to "Good lord, how many times is he going to PLAY the dang thing, anyway?"

***

I've got my church's hymnal open on my lap here.

Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (will do, although it's not strictly speaking Christmas music)

Of the Father's Love Begotten (perfect for a short intro)

The First Noel

What Child is This (which is the tune of "Greensleeves", but don't worry, everybody in the congregation will instantly perceive it as the Christmas version because of the "Christmas" context)

I Wonder As I Wander (perhaps the most perfect solo oboe song ever)

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne

O Come O Come Emmanuel

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus (famous tune of "Hyfrydol", but in the Christmas context, they will hear the "Christmas lyrics")

Silent Night (this one is more of a benediction or recessional; it's frequently used as the last song in caroling--if you need to "play them out of the room" as they leave, this would be the song for it)

O Holy Night (rather longer, more of a "set piece" than a fill-in, because you absolutely MUST reprise the chorus and hit the high G on the last "O night, O HOOOOOly night" with the little five-note descending scale, because it's expected of the soloist)

Good Christian Men Rejoice (a.k.a. In Dulci Jubilo)

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (played very slowly and thoughtfully)

Away in a Manger (ditto)

Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming

The Birthday of a King (you have to play this twice through because the second verse is the knockout verse--"...from the manger bed what a path has led..."--and everybody knows it)

One Small Child (rapidly becoming a new Christmas standard)

We Three Kings (the #2 most perfect oboe solo)

***

A huge plus in playing for a particular church is that you don't need to find sheet music for any of this. Just play it straight out of the hymnal. Check it out beforehand because the soprano part (melody) has an upper limit usually of Eb2 in actual practice, and if you're playing "O Holy Night" you're gonna need to hit a G, so either plan on doing some octave-jumping around, or else transcribe it for yourself in a different key.

Twice a month I play in my church's orchestra, and I play the alto line straight out of the hymnal an octave higher, it works perfectly. The few times the Flute has been "out" and I've been assigned to play the melody, playing it an octave higher works well too, except that I have to do some octave-jumping if it goes up to Eb or E, which a few of them do.

If you do need a slightly longer set-piece, see if you can get the church's #1 Choir soprano (don't worry, there is one), to join you on "O Holy Night", and then she sings the melody and you play along with her; personally I think oboes and the human voice were made for each other, I think an oboe and a soprano in unison become greater than the sum of their parts, plus you get to bolster her a bit, fill in the blanks so to speak, so she's not quite so "out there in front of God and everybody" a capella alone.

And don't forget to do 2 verses, and on the 2nd verse have her do the "hit the high G" thing, it's always a showstopper. Generally if you do 2 verses, you do the first verse and then the "Truly He taught us" verse which is the 3rd verse in most hymnals.

If you need a second set-piece, I'd go with "The Birthday of a King". It's a standard for a choir soprano.

She will not need to rehearse these much, she has been singing them since she was 14 years old.

Find out what carols the congregation is going to sing, and try not to duplicate those. Don't get too excited about playing along with the congregation, since if there are more than about 20 people, they will drown you out. I am here to testify to that. At my church, you can hear the Oboe (me) on Sunday night service when the church is 3/4 empty, but on Sunday morning with all 180~ people there? Forget about it.

Ask the music director what kind of music *he's* expecting, whether his expectations are for "classical stuff", or whether a capella Christmas carols will be fine. Also, it kind of depends on how much they are paying you--they may feel like if you just play some a capella Christmas carols, they're not getting their money's worth ("Humph. We paid him X dollars, and all he did was play 'Silent Night'!" they'll be grousing about it for years).

As a benchmark, at my church, all musicians who are going to be paid are given an "honorarium" (never a "fee"), and it's usually $50 for an "intermediate advanced" level of performers; we don't pay the big bucks for truly professional players.

Be aware that in some of the more conservative Evangelical churches, there is a strong prejudice against paying musicians for performing; the feeling is that members of the congregation should do it as an act of worship, and that if God hasn't raised up for Himself an oboist in the church, then guess we won't have an oboist.

So if you're being paid to play the oboe, I'm guessing that either this is a large, sophisticated, and wealthy church, in which case they may not be happy, as I said, with paying you to tootle your way casually through "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger", or else that the music director is trying to do something "a little different this year", which may or may not bring down the wrath of the congregation upon his head the week after this, but that's not your problem, or else that he's new and doesn't know, for example, that "we don't pay for musicians in our church".

So, either way, I think you need to have a sit-down with him and really pin him down on what's desired here. Don't let him fob you off with a vague, "Oh, whatever you want to play is fine", because he may be coming to the table with some very different assumptions.

Wear a nice suit and tie. No khakis or jeans. These are Baptists, so I'd remove all body piercings. The United Methodists usually get along OK with piercings, but I think it's a bit much to ask of the Baptists. [grin]