Stuck in a Rutter

Well December has returned, and having called the pope a coward, and attacked all of Christian academia, it’s time to turn to Christmas.

I won’t rant on the phony “War on Christmas” that turns a chi into an x and calls it communism, or on the commercialization of the holiday. I’ll let Linus and Charlie Brown handle that last one.

No, it’s time to turn to the god of the choir directors. Who wants the mysterious, mystical music of Avo Paart or John Taverner? That’s just too freaky. Who wants to be transported to heaven on Christmas? That won’t do at all. Christmas is all about FEELINGS. Warm, fuzzy nostalgic feelings. Like Homer Simpson in the land of chocolate, we want to be transported to a land where all is sweetness, and even the dogs are delicious.

No composer does that better than John Rutter. With David Willcocks, he is responsible for the infamous Carols for Choirs collection used (and cursed) by choirs around the English-speaking world. Almost every half-ways famous Christmas carol in English or at least translated into English has made its way into this book, except, oddly, the Boar’s Head Carol. I guess “sage and rosemar-aye” is not sweet enough.

There is hardly a page in any of these carols or any of the other compositions of this prolific (epidemic might be a better word) composer that are not marked dolce. Whenever forced to sing one of these beasts, I come out of the experience with a massive toothache. I feel like I just ate a bowl of Skittles chased it with red pop and then mainlined a dozen pixie-stix. Rutter Christmas carols are bereft of any uncomfortable theological terms like those in “O Come all ye Faithful”, smelly shepherds (probably slaves) or pagan astrologers from Iran. No exhausted, raven haired, dark-skinned 14 year old girl who just dropped the placenta on pile of straw on a dirt floor. No swarthy-looking Joseph, either.

No, Rutter’s nativity is a pretty Victorian painting with immaculately clean oxen and asses bowing politely to a pinkish baby Jesus attended to by a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in her early 30’s dressed like a medieval queen. All is sweetness and light. Except for the singers, that is.

For those unfortunate enough to sing Rutter, the dolces ring with bitter irony. I think his outer sweetness masks an ancient, deep-seated hostility toward choirs. Maybe he had a particularly nasty choir director as a child, or he was dropped on his head as an infant while his parents were out caroling one Christmas. Whatever the root problem is, John Rutter should seek out a licensed therapist immediately.

With cold, mechanical sadism, Rutter turns simple Christmas carols, psalms and anything else he can get his paws on into the ultimate “gotcha” pieces. The same phrase is never the same way twice. Even if it’s the same words and melody, there is always a dotted note where there wasn’t before, two eighth notes instead of one quarter note, a note the crosses that of another voice part, or two sixteenth notes going down instead of up as it was before. I have heard choristers utter many words whose meanings are the exact opposite of “gloria in excelsis” after botching that third verse for the fifteenth time. And his arrangement of “I Saw Three Ships” always reminds me of the song “Who’s afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?” from the Disney short.

At any rate, I’ve been enough of a grinch for now. Merry Christmas to all and to all a Rutter-less night!