Jump to content
Mander Organ Builders Forum

sotto

Members
  • Posts

    129
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by sotto

  1. Neither the BBC nor King's College has ever advertised Carols from King's as a live broadcast. The Order of Service for the annual Festival of Lessons & Carols (available online) states in the introduction, "In recent years it has become the practice to broadcast a recording of the service on Christmas Day on Radio Three, and since 1963 a shorter service has been filmed [my italics] periodically for television."

    I wasn't trying to sugest any great cover-up or conspiracy, but nevertheless I'm sure that many people believe they're watching a live broadcast from Kings College Chapell and that they're witnessing this amazing thing where the soloist for the 1st verse of Once in Royal only gets the nod just before the broadcast begins. It does seem to me that there's at least an element of sham in this if its recorded and God knows how many retakes may have been filmed.

     

    I'm not a regluar viewer of this, but I did watch both last year (ie. Christmas 07) and this year (ie. Christmas 08) and was surprised at what, from memory, seemed to overlap or re-occur from one year to the next. This year overall I was not particularly impressed.

     

    At the risk of scandal, I thought it amusing that whilst last year one of the main cameramen obviously thought one of the boys to be particularly photogenic, shall we say, this year it was one of the choral scholars.

  2. Slightly off topic, but as someone with a brother (52) who is a CF sufferer, I was delighted to see that "A Boy Called Alex" was amongst the choral scholars in evidence at the 9 lessons & carols.

     

    The broadcast itself seems a bit of a farce. I found myself being impressed by the whole choir's ability to start unaccompanied carols without any given chord, but then frequently being reminded that the service is effectively fake by the pecularliarly changing lighting conditions in the chapel. How are you even supposed to believe its live when there is light streaming through the chapel windows at a time when, given the time of year, it should be pitch black outside?

×
×
  • Create New...