It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Yule, Y’all

Much like every commercial advertiser in America, I seem to be having a difficult time leaving Christmas in its appropriate place this year. This will be the first time in at least three years that I have been able to put up my own tree and decorations, having spent the last three years living like a doctoral student in Baton Rouge while all of my Christmas stuff lay in boxes housed 14 hours away in Charleston. Usually I like to wait at least until Advent for the decorations to go up and the Christmas music to start creeping in, but with the release of the Celtic Christmas CD Sing We Now of Christmas by the Taylor Festival Choir, I’ve simply needed to start the music part a little earlier than Thanksgiving. That’s just the way it is. I had the pleasure of contributing a piece to this compilation as well as doing some work as a session assistant, so it has been wonderful to hear the final product.

Sometime last May I received an email from Rob Taylor inviting me to contribute a piece to this CD of Medieval/Celtic inspired Christmas arrangements. Initially he had wanted me to write an arrangement of “I Saw Three Ships” that alternated with the jig “Blarney Pilgrim,” but then decided that he had some good ideas for that one himself. The final assignment was to create a Medieval/Celtic arrangement of “Patapan” for choir, violin/fiddle, percussion, and guitar and to throw in a view “prrrrums” to connect it to “The Little Drummer Boy,” which would precede “Patapan” on the disc. Oh, and by the way, “your fiddle player is Liz Carroll and your guitar player is John Doyle.” Now, for those of you that don’t know, these two characters are sort of a big deal in the Celtic music world. A world renowned, Grammy-nominated big deal. How could I resist? Of course, at that time all I had to do was finish a massive third chapter revision of the monograph, close down the residence halls, pack up everything I owned to move out, wrap things up with my church choir, continue to apply for jobs, conduct phone interviews, and prepare to fly to Santa Fe for a three day visit with United Church. No big deal. Honestly, there was a point at which I knew I was going to have to call Rob and tell him there was no way I could do it, but like most stories of this genre I pulled through and was terribly glad that I did.

Typically (for me, anyway) the first step to creating a piece is to play it on the piano, so there is a very kinesthetic component to composition/arranging in my world. Writing “Patapan” was probably the first time that I was actually writing what I heard in my head rather than noodling on the piano to discover the tune. Once I started to hear the fiddle solos and a lot of the guitar accompaniment in my head, I knew it would be okay. After all, I had spent the last few years absorbing the work of Emerald Rose, the Hungry Monks, and John Doyle to name a few style “North Stars,” so I HAD to have learned SOMETHING. As for the “Medieval” tinge, research shows that parallel fourths and fifths equal a more antiquated sound, so I made sure to include a verse with this trick and wrote the alto part to slightly obscure the effect, take the edge off, and bring it slightly into the 21st century. Anyway, ultimately this is what happened:

“Patapan” (arr. Karen Marrolli) Taylor Festival Choir, Robert Taylor, conductor; with John Doyle, guitar, Liz Carroll, fiddle, Danny Mallon, percussion. All rights reserved.

Not only was this piece a huge departure from anything I had done before (both style and procedure-wise), it was a chance to branch out into the Celtic style in which I had become so engrossed. To prove this, I wrote every flippin’ note- no improv from the musicians, save some adjustments to the bodhrán part. Later I would find out that this was a little stress inducing to the folk musicians. John Doyle, in particular, did not read written notation and was accustomed to simply improvising chords and rhythm patterns underneath a given melody (a testament, I believe, to his innate and incredible musicianship… if you have not experienced the amazing guitar work of John Doyle, you need to go get yourself a CD of his for Christmas) so even though I had only provided the chord symbols for the guitar, coordinating the timing with the rest of the ensemble proved to be a challenge. The good news: I had to spend a good amount of time in the practice room with John singing through the piece and working out the timing of the chord changes while he played. If I were ever going to have grandchildren, this would be a great story. As it stands, I’ll just have to continuously tell my cat, who does not seem to care. Liz Carroll, on the other hand, apparently reads like a fiend and rocked the fiddle solos on the first read through, so I’m told.

The CD also includes some great arrangements by Rob Taylor (“I Saw Three Ships” and “Wexford Carol,” in particular) and Susan Conant (“Sing We Now of Christmas”), and the choir and instrumentalists are world class. Through the marriage of folk and “classical” performance idioms, Sing We Now offers a fresh new perspective on familiar tunes and even puts forth some excellent pieces that may not be so familiar (i.e., Nelhybel’s neo-Medieval Christmas tour-de-force “Estampie Natalis” or Michael McGlynn’s haunting “Sanctus” from the Celtic Mass). In case you can’t tell, I highly recommend this CD. Conant’s “Sing we Now of Christmas” alone is worth the price of admission. The CD is available through MSR Classics.