Bob Chilcott: Christmas is a time when a lot of choirs and singers really
invest in the time of the year; they invest their energy towards
the huge number of Christmas concerts there are. And I think
it's really great to refresh the repertoire. I mean, we're very
good at doing the traditional and we do that well, and they
always come back, the favorite ones. But when you think about
Carols for Choirs 1, it probably completely changed the outlook
at that time – David [Willcocks] doing those carols with brass
and with descants, and that sort of thing. And I kind of feel
it's a good time now to be writing new pieces, because
there's a real richness of composers writing in the choral
field. I'm really excited by the big amount of music that
David [Hill] has managed to source from American composers,
some of whom will be very well known to classical music lovers,
and some names will be completely new. Similarly, I
have maybe different contexts of reference, and have managed to
source some great material. So, I'm really excited by that, and
I'm looking forward to seeing how people enjoy singing this
repertoire. I know one thing that David and I do have very
much in common, and from our point of view, with this Carols
for Choirs 6 book, we were working very hard to think about
is what kind of quality of piece we wanted. We both share the
same desire to have beautifully made things. I think a piece of
music when it's beautifully made, it appeals to the singer,
it appears to the conductor, and it appears to the listener. So,
I think that's been the benchmark for what we've been
trying to look at. We've been trying to get beautifully made
things.
David Hill: One of the words which comes to mind when
thinking about Carols for Choirs 6 and is quite special, is
diverse. And I think there are so many aspects of diversity
that we managed to really enjoy bringing together in the
different texts, the different styles of composition, the
different people from the different countries, all with
different kinds of experiences of life. And I think that's
really important, to bring something together in a book
that's still telling us about Christmas-tide, and why it is a
wonderful worldwide time of festivity. A good carol, for
me, is going to be one which I can go away after having heard
it, and think, gosh, that had made a real impression on me. It
could be the melody, and often that's a very important part. Of
course, it can be the words, whether they're secular or
whether they're sacred, or indeed whether they're new words
that are making you think in a new way. And my feeling would
be that a new carol which says to a person, something new,
something different, is going to be a great success, and I think
we've been very lucky in Carols for Choirs 6, in bringing
together a lot of wonderful carols. Many of them are really
searching out the idea of melody and good harmony, and I think
that music that is well-crafted is a massively important. So,
there are a number of things which make a carol something we
all want to remember, Christmas by Christmas.