From The Times

December 7, 2007

Reinventing the Christmas Carol

Geoff Brown

Do carols belong to the 21st century? For the bookseller and campaigning writer William Hone in his 1823 book Ancient Mysteries Described, carols had already passed their peak. They were spoken of, he observed, as "not belonging to this century". But the 19th century was to prove him wrong. The Victorian prettification of Christmas, complete with holly, ivy and the sending of cards, brought new life to the tradition of community singing of festive verses.

It's easy enough to stack up reasons why carols at Christmas might now seem an endangered species. The country's faith has both dwindled and multiplied. We believe in many shades of religion or none at all, except selfishness and the God Consumption. How can verses about the baby Jesus, wise men and dingdong bells have appeal in the world of the high-street stampede?

In search of answers I went not to royal David's city but to Manchester, where I discovered two antiburglary carols, written by the Salford division of Greater Manchester Police, and helpfully printed on restaurant serviettes. "Crime prevention and neighbourhood patrols,/Crime in Salford, being kept under control." Difficult to imagine even John Rutter, the most prolific composer of modern carols, sprinkling his magic over that couplet.

But the 21st century has done nothing to prevent two others from the Manchester area from reshaping and modernising the Christmas story - the poet Carol Ann Duffy and the composer Sasha Johnson Manning, who have written 16 new carols. Duffy, brought up a Catholic, pronounces herself an atheist; Johnson Manning is a committed Christian. Yet the pair never came to blows: both wanted carols for everyone, believers or not. The result is The Manchester Carols, to be given its premiere on December 14 in Manchester, at the Royal Northern College of Music (already sold out). They hope that it will be the first stage in a progress through schools and all places where people sing.

For Manning, a composer and singer with much church experience, this meant writing tunes that swing round the corner like buses - "buses I hope people will jump on. I always like to write a melody, and I'm not ashamed of that". She writes them well, too: once heard, the Manchester tunes are hard to shake off. These are definitely carols to sing, not listen to - a leap away from the artefacts commissioned for King's College's Service of Nine Lessons and Carols (this year, the composer is the Australian Brett Dean).

The key to whether a Christmas carol fits the 21st century lies with its text. Building on her experience of writing for young readers and remodelling fairy stories, Duffy aimed to use the Christmas story as a metaphor for human experience, expressed in simple words. "We started by looking at the Gospels. The first one we wrote was New Boy Born- for me this was about the joy of any new baby being born."

Duffy is always watching her language in these carols. The Angel of the Annunciation, announcing Mary's virgin birth, is called a "golden youth". Jesus's name arrives late in the cycle - carol 13. Johnson Manning was amused and glad: "I thought: 'Hey! Come on in from the cold, lad'!"

The pair worked together intensively, sometimes producing one carol a day, following the arc of the Gospel story. Duffy says she was "really struck by how relevant the stories are to the 21st century - the refugees, the poverty, giving birth on the road, the persecution". But drawing out these parallels is a dangerous game. If you push the contemporary references too hard, as the Salford police might have discovered, there's actually not much to sing about. No one wants a carol to be a musical version of The Ten O'Clock News.

Duffy's usual solution is to sprinkle, not scream, her contemporary vocabulary. Call it Nazareth, inspired by the Holy Family's return from exile, rings with the names of "pretty dark places": Baghdad, Darfur, Bosnia, New Orleans (Manchester is slipped in, too.) "They're still home, these places: that's the point."

Could carols be killed off? It hasn't happened yet. And, despite the march of global warming, the snow's still here in these ones; winds still whip, to offset the warmth of home and community celebrated by Duffy and Johnson Manning. "Of course carols are still viable. We need them more than ever," the composer says. "But carols that look forward, not back - carols with new thoughts, new possibilities." Just what the Salford police were thinking.

WHAT WOULD YOU PUT IN A NEW CAROL?

Peter Maxwell Davies, composer If Christmas is going to mean anything, it's got to be renewed, and that includes new carols - ones that point to the central, spiritual meaning of Christmas, which has been overshadowed. When I have written new carols in the past I have often based them on medieval texts. I regard religion as a marvellous work of art, and I wouldn't exclude it from carols.

Don Black, lyricist I'm not sure we need new Christmas carols. I love the way carols elevate you to a different place; they're a kind of musical Valium! And I think if I was to write a new one today it would have all the old ingredients - I'd be singing about hope and love, and I might throw in the odd manger.

Debbie Wiseman, composer If I was writing a new carol, I'd use a present-day story, with a simple tune that everybody could learn, and I wouldn't make it religious, I'd make it a spiritual, uplifting song that could connect with everybody. It would centre around peace and goodwill to all men - that was the starting point for most Christmas carols.

INTERVIEWS BY LOUISE COHEN The Manchester Carols, Dec 14, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (http://www.themanchestercarols.com)