I attended on Sunday evening, with some of our family, the Service of Lessons and Carols at our Church, which is St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow.
It is a beautiful building full of light and was well-filled on what turned-out to be the worse evening we have had this year, snow-wise.
It started with the traditional solo from the front, of the first verse of ’Once in royal David’s city’. Then followed the various Lessons interspersed with Choir, and Congregational, carols and hymns. Some were well-known, some rarely sung, some completely unknown. Amongst them were tradional Icelandic and Dominican carols; the famous ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ set by Harold Darke; and a children’s favourite, ‘Little lamb who made Thee?’
We finished with ‘O come, all ye faithful’, and it was only then that I realised the enormity of wealth of music and words I had been able to hear, understand, and appreciate.
I know that there were many there who would use the loop with their hearing-aids, but there would probably also have been some, with no usable hearing, and to whom much of this wonderful sound might have been meaningless.
Very sad! Roll-on gene therapy and hair-cell replacement to allow at least the future generations join in the wealth of music which many of us currently enjoy.
