The Christmas music I love best tends to be rather dark and wintry. Almost as if they were afraid of this, St George’s Cathedral, Perth, commissioned me to compose a carol/anthem that would be ‘joyful’. I asked the poet David McCooey for some words about the anticipation of Christmas in blazing summer heat and he came up with ‘Christmas List’, which I’ve really enjoyed putting to music (it wasn’t easy). I only finished my setting this month, but already it’s been tried out by the boys in the choir. The carol is for SATB voices and organ and St George’s Cathedral Choir will give it three performances this Christmas, conducted by Joseph Nolan.
Choir of St George sings ‘Christmas List’ at St George’s Cathedral, Perth, at 7:30pm services on 16, 23 and 24 December.
David McCooey: Christmas List
You drive beneath the daylight moon,
past flower sellers by the roadside
who seek asylum from the morning’s heat,
their psychedelic harvests housed in
ancient eskies and bright plastic buckets.
The traffic’s thin and well-intentioned;
and unread emails snooze within devices.
Your children, clutching well-wrapped presents,
dream of plastic gift-cards from relations,
and seafood lunch beneath a cyan sky
But you remember all the words to all
the carols you sang in school.
Hosanna for the Christmas tree
that turns the whole world upside down.
Hosanna for the family
that turns the old world upside down.
You remember how the house transformed:
a yellow submarine upon the tree,
a tinsel bow tied round the ageing dog,
the tv trying to be appealing:
the queen, the news, the usual repeats.
Now as you drive a loaded car
you tick different things off your Christmas list:
the children safe from Herod’s agents;
the desperate families reunited;
a vision of the flaming Christmas Bush,
for which you lack a proper name,
that shelters birds beneath the daylight moon.
Hosanna for the Christmas tree
that turns the whole world upside down.
Hosanna for the family
that turns the old world upside down.