Well, as I type my parents are finally in the air somewhere over Europe, destined to land in Spain in about half an hour. I won’t relax until I know they have touched down at the right airport, but after a few stressful days involving tiring trips to and from Gatwick airport on icy roads so they could catch assorted cancelled flights it looks like today’s journey has been successful and they will spend Christmas in (possibly) sunnier climes, and at the risk of sounding mean and ungrateful, I might get a bit of a rest and some peace and quiet around here.

Anyway I was tired today when I drove them over, and while on the way I had company in the car to keep me alert it was tough making the hundred mile trip back again on my own without getting drowsy at the wheel. To counter this feeling, (and because it is Sunday) I put on the radio, and BBC Radio 3 in particular to listen to what I hoped would be some rousing classical music at high volume.  Alas I forgot the time of year, and of course all of the journey home was taken up with a “Christmas concert” broadcast live from Warsaw. Christmas music, it would seem, means early choral music, mostly from the sixteenth century. Why this would be I’m not sure, but the programme included music by Josquin Desprez, Victoria, Tallis, Lasso and an early Polish composer named Mikolaj Zielenski. I find myself responding to this area of music with mixed feelings. It is of course stunningly beautiful, most often composed with remarkably intricate complexity and a brilliant understanding of harmonics and how they work when applied to the human voice. Perhaps it is just a symptom of my unfamiliarity with the music, but I do find so much of it very similar indeed, and despite a fair amount of careful listening I struggle to tell the work of different composers apart, though maybe this is more down to the mannerisms of twenty-first century realisations of music that is several hundred years old. Would all of the music have sounded so similar when performed all those years ago? Does our modern musical microscope tint the original compositions in certain, perhaps market-friendly ways?

I also cannot help but struggle to get past the religious elements of this area of music. I do mange to do so, more than I used to, but at the end of a year in which my impatience with organised religion has grown considerably I must admit my bottom lip would curl up driving home tonight as I heard the singers intone the words Ave Maria or Hallelujah every second line. Still, my interest was in the overall impact on the music, played out loud as I drove around the M25 rather than any minute breakdown of the music’s meaning. However if my intention was to play this music so as to stay awake I am afraid it probably had the opposite effect. Massed choral voices like this sound to me like an early form of ambient music. Admittedly very intricate, carefully constructed and executed ambient music, but all the same somewhat relaxing and sleep-inducing. At one point I actually felt the need to turn the channel over (partly through a piece by the curiously named composer Victoria, of whom I know nothing) simply because the music, even though played very loud had a strong soporific effect on me, which as you can imagine is not exactly what I needed at that point. However when I flicked the radio on to the next available station I got an immediate blast, at very high volume, of Jimmy Nail’s atrocity of a pop song Crocodile Shoes. This woke me up completely and immediately, and after I had nearly crashed into an articulated lorry in my frantic efforts to turn it off I found myself wide awake and did not feel drowsy again for the rest of the journey home.

I turned back to Radio 3, and later found the closing piece of the programme, a work by Mikolaj Zielenski, one of only two that remain from the composer, who died in the early seventeenth century. The piece (I forget the title, but it probably mentioned the virgin Mary) was performed by the Polish group presenting the afternoon’s works, but spilt into three vocal quartets, who seemed to sing separately to each other, so their voices, divided into these sections sang out in opposition to each other rather than in more obvious harmony, as is usually the case in this area of music. There were also three instrumental parts here, one for organ, one for a sole cello, and another that I did not catch the name of, but it sounded like some kind of lute or early stringed instrument. This was the first and only performance on the programme to include any instrumental parts and it worked very well, as the playing, albeit somewhat restrained and merely just accompaniment added an extra dimension to the music that gave it an added interest value to me.

So now I am home and playing a disc of Benjamin Britten’s String Quartets, which I like some of more than others, but really I am just enjoying the peace and quiet around here. Hallelujah.