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Let all the world in every corner sing
Returning to camp after partaking of a few bevies in Basingstoke, to celebrate the successful completion of another section of our training, we young soldiers broke into a rendition of Duke of Earl, accompanied by banging with our fists on the ceiling of the upper deck of the bus. The conductor was not impressed by our vocals and threatened to eject us if we did not desist immediately.
In those days people did sing. Grandma warbled while she was washing the pots, and some of the songs were slightly risqué. In the era before railway passengers had personal stereos screwed into their ears we joined in with carols, in the appropriate season, on trains. When men could go out for a drink without being assailed with muzak they entertained themselves, and everybody else, with two part harmony. Nobody would dare to do that now. So unusual is the joy of corporate singing that a whole television series was dedicated to the touching spectacle of a group of service wives forming a choir. In my army days it was the service men who sang together, but the words would hardly be fit for family viewing, even after the 9.00pm watershed.
When we have occasional visitors in church, as we do on a Christmass morning, they have no knowledge of how to sing the hymns, nor the liturgy. The practice of tuneful harmony has gone. Somehow we have lost a whole tradition, which brings me back to the theme of February. Forty days after the birth of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, his mother, took him up to the temple in Jerusalem, following the instructions given to Moses, to redeem him by the sacrifice of two young pigeons, and for her to be ritually purified after childbirth. It was at that time that the old man Simeon, as related in the Gospel according to S. Luke, came up with the words of the Nunc Dimittis and gave us something to put to Anglican chant. Will that also be lost to the next generation? One would hope not.
May God bless you all, Fr. Allan
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