Hark the herald angels sing . . .
Mentioned in Despatches
A Question or Two:
How many different versions of the phrase Joy To The World have you heard? How do they differ? Who sings them?
Why? What does the phrase mean in each version?
So how do you define Xmas this year? Christmas, shortened to Xmas, has backfilled to Christmas holidays, and back to simply ‘holidays’.
The spelling of holiday longer allows it as a holyday, or even a Hollywood white Xmas hollyday. Nothing but memories connect it with the feast which occupied the attention of the Empire, or Christendom, and even the vestigial associations have been subverted by foreigners.
Our goose, already cooked, has become an American turkey, and all the trimmings have shifted. In front of me I have a scratchy, one of those expensively addictive gambling pleasures which, like strip tease, promises everything and delivers nothing, except, in this case, an offer of another ticket, free.
It does not actuallly use the words Christmas, but all 12 scratchable images suggest ‘Christmas’ associations.
The imagery becomes the updated definition of the feast, the holyday, holiday, the buy-now-pay-later triumph of giving and eating which has more to do with appearances than pleasure. Santa Claus/St Nicholas has become the Coca Cola jolly fat man advertising triumph, an angel looks very similar in shape to the teddy roosevelt bear above it, there’s a stylised Xmas pud and a bottle of wine, and something which looks like a life buoy ring, but may be a wreath.
These are images which have been appropriated by the trinket and bauble markets, revising history and utterly rejecting the arts which lie behind the ‘wholly day’’, and instead define the latest version of the festive season in all its hedonistic simplicity.
In 2019, calling what we see, and hear, ‘Christmas’ is like wearing T shirts carrying free advertising for alcohol and clothing brands. So, let’s enjoy the change and greet each other with a ‘‘Happy Pudding Day!’’ Pudding? Yeah. That thing we stuff with all kinds of goodies and then set on fire after the frozen turkey has been deconstructed, and then have fried in butter for Boxing day breakfast. Now there is a meaningful good wish. Stuff stockings! ‘‘Merry Puddings to you all.’’
Christmas is Music
Well, singing, anyway. Anywhere you go where there is a church, or even just an organisation, at this time of the year there will be a choir.
The Sallies do it in small groups on truck tour with tambourine and tuba harmonising herald angels and babies in mangers accompanied by the rattling percussion of genuine charity boxes. Kids do it for their proud parents at end of year school functions, the duty music teachers waving batons like wish fulfilment canes and singing loudly along with their charges, switching parts whenever a part falters.
Some, I swear, can even sing two parts art a time. Regular choirs bring out their abridged versions of Messiah, abridging them to suit their circumstances, even down to a single chorus, daringly offering
And The Glory of the Lord as an alternative to the Hallelujah Chorus.
With a boisterous ‘‘Ant the gory’’, being corrected in rehearsal to ‘‘In the gollory’’ so that even though we, like sheep, may have gone astray, when their sound is gone out, then Hallelujah! every one as Tiny Tim didn’t quite say.
Then they pop in a range of pop carols to make people feel more Christmasy after the heavy classical sound, and with a ‘‘What are you going to do this year?’’ or two, off to tea and mince pies for all.
All over the country, parish church choirs do it, with a perspiring conductor/ organist valiantly trying to conduct and play, and offer useful comments at the same time.
‘‘Basses! Watch and listen. You’ve shown you can do two things at once because you are flat and out of step at the same time. Watch my hands. Doesn’t fit well with our flock of starling sopranos – all chatter and a random absence of anything resembling music. ‘‘And We Like Sheep doesn’t mean a leg of Christmas lamb.’’ The two female tenors looked at each other, grinned self righteously, and sang confidently, double forte, flatter than a flounder and a bar behind.
‘‘My time! My time! Even if you can’t sing in tune, at least sing my time, not Paris time, or bus timetable time, or the dirge of a melancholic folk singer looking for a third chord time.
We only have a week until Christmas eve, dammit.’’ But they love it, still they turn up for rehearsals, passionate about the music, because, after all, Christmas is music.
Waiclay has developed a significant reputation as a showcase for ‘‘the current work of ceramic artists throughout New Zealand.’’
It is a reputation which allows the museum to engage international judges of the highest quality, and this year a highlight of the exhibition is the judge herself allowing herself to be judged. Her work, Chimera stands at one entrance to the exhibition gallery while the Premier Award winner bookends the exhibition at the other. Multiple award winning judge Kasumi Ueba of course takes a risk in encouraging comparisons of her work and that of competition entrants, but hers is a complete ceramic truth. Aesthetically exquisite, it is technically authoritative, witty, goodhumoured, and offers a series of potential narratives of genuine depth.
Clearly, this judge is qualified in the best senses of that word.
To find the winning entry, Fiona Tunnicliffe’s Blue Horse also exhibiting those qualities is at once a joy and a confirmation of the quality of New Zealand ceramics. Her use of minimalist pigmentation has a patchwork of cobalt blue (at least to my less-than-perfect colour sense) and smokey greys turning a young draught horse into an icon of security, trust, and reliability.
Optimism is the winner in this aesthetically, and practically, beautifully balanced piece where the horse stands on a fascinating cube. Tunniclife has a second piece alongside Blue Horse as witty and comic a work one could ever wish to see — so you do need to find the snail and the coffee mug.
A well won merit award went to Trish Seddon’s somewhat disconcerting Two
Skulls – huge eye sockets, a pair of large snake length canines, and horns of coral.
Technically accomplished, full of interest and latent narrative.
Despite such excellence, this was not a high point of Waiclay exhibitions.
There was a sense that some exhibitors were more concerned with being impressively different, and that the potter’s art was in danger of being overwhelmed by sensational pieces which were, as Shakespeare so succincltly put it , ‘‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’’
Waiclay, however, is an institution which is here to stay, and will keep on giving visitors both an informed and stimulating dose of top quality ceramic art every year.