Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman Page B

cathedral’s exterior. Somehow, I managed to remain quiet in our rehearsals and concentrate on the work at hand.
    In England, the historic Canterbury Cathedral was the sacred space where I performed my first televised Christmas concert. I remember visiting the cathedral prior to our first rehearsal there and coming across a stone plaque in the floor, which read 1687. I thought, My word, here we have a church that is older than the United States! There was something magical in that.
    So, too, was the way that this particular Christmas concert came to be. I had a great deal of work to do in Europe and wanted a base from which to travel, and so I chose England. Knowing that I would be in Europe during Christmastime, I decided to rent a house in the country where friends might gather and we would have a lovely celebration of the holidays.
    Christmas magic is real.
    We gathered on Christmas Eve—had a fire ablaze in a large fireplace, and a huge, beautifully appointed tree standing in one corner, feathered underneath with beautifully wrapped packages. We had read some of the New Testament account of the Christmas story, and were planning to sing Christmas carols with the lovely piano that was just there next to the Christmas tree. Dinner was delicious, and some of us were off busily preparing coffee and dessert afterward when, suddenly, someone started playing the piano. The melody was unfamiliar to me, but those of us in food-preparation mode kept to the business at hand.
    In no hurry at all, we emerged finally with the last part of our meal prepared. It was then that Jane, a writer, and Don, a composer and arranger, announced that they had written a new Christmas carol, and that it would be called “Jessye’s Carol.” I did not take them seriously, but I was understandably curious as to what they had actually done. Indeed, in the time it took for us to prepare dessert, they had created this song:
     
Green and silver,
Red and gold.
And a story borne of old;
truth and love and hope abide, this Christmastide.
     
    The dessert waited as we all gathered around the piano to sing this new song! Afterward, I announced to those present: “Okay, from this song, we shall make a Christmas CD.”
    And we did; it is called Christmastide.
    The Canterbury Cathedral was a poignant choice for filming this work for television, as it had been an important landmark for American air pilots in World War II; the building gave them a precise calculation of their proximity to the sea and an absolute certainty of their location in the United Kingdom. So an American singing in this cathedral, sparked by a song created by two Brits, had a rather lovely symmetry to the circle of life. I was joined by the American Boychoir of Princeton, New Jersey, and the cathedral’s boys’ choir, who worked so wonderfully well together, with the cathedral’s gothic interior providing several beautiful places in which to record different segments of the program.
    We filmed in July, but with these massive edifices and their stone walls—in some places they are more than two feet thick—one could feel the chill, even in high summer, so our saying “Happy Christmas” to one another during that week of work did not seem in the least out of place. The plan was to perform the concert for a live audience and, if necessary, do retakes following the performance, the manner in which many such programs are prepared for television broadcast, generally. Preparation is key, so it goes without saying that our schedule was packed with rehearsals. On one particular day, I was in my “dressing room” during a rehearsal break, going over the words to oh so many songs, when I heard what sounded like a relatively tentative rap on my door. Then a slightly bolder one. I called out for the person to enter, and in walked about five of the young boys from the American boys’ choir. Immediately, I asked if anything was wrong. Right away, one of them answered, “Oh, no! We just wanted