Trinity Cathedral looked different last night for the service of Lessons and Carols – the pews were gone, replaced by folding chairs – and it sounded different, the reduction in hard surfaces making the music, according to one choir member afterwards, sound “more alive.”
The service began traditionally, with the beautiful “Once in Royal David’s City,” and then threw in some surprises: a few of the lessons were read in Spanish, and one of the carols was Polish, with the first verse sung in Polish. (This constituted the first time I have sung better than the rest of the congregation.) One carol I had never heard before, by Judith Weir, carried the words of William Blake:
The Angel that presided o’er my birth said,
Little Creature form’d of Joy and Mirth,
Go Love without the help of anything on Earth.
