The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Can religious music make you a believer? If so, one example would surely would be the moving Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols that airs on Wisconsin Public Radio today at 9 a.m. CST and on Christmas Day at noon.

By Jacob Stockinger

I suppose you can argue that it is not really classical music.

But no one can say that it isn’t classic music.

I am talking about the yearly broadcast of The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College in the United Kingdom.

Music is so central to the service. And there are old standards as well as new commissions.

The Ear finds the whole production so moving that it would give make non-believers the desire to believe. After all, what is evoked and summoned are the ideals of compassion and redemption. And who can’t benefit from those values?

I also feel that same way about many of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s cantatas and passions and abut the requiems by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Gabriel Faure. (Tell us what pieces make you feel that way in a COMMENT.)

Anyway, the festival service will be broadcast LIVE this morning at 9 a.m. CST on Wisconsin Public Radio (88.7 FM in the Madison area) with an encore production on Christmas Day at noon CST. (You could stream it also by going to wpr.org.)

But in case you miss it or can’t listen to it, here in a YouTube video is the always inspirational opening hymn — “Once in Royal David’s City” that features a solo boy d soprano singing out to the entire world — and procession from another year’s production, from 2010. The opening is just so poignant, so beautifully developed and expanded, and the service continue to live up to the high standards that have been established over many decades of the ceremony.

So for 2013, from The Ear to you, Merry Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas!