How to Create a Musical Christmas Cracker

Photo: Chris O’Donovan

Keen to embrace new music, we commission a new Christmas piece every year. You can hear the world premiere of this year’s cracker of a composition on December 6^th at 7.30pm in Huddersfield Town Hall. Its composer, Kristina Arakelyan (www.kristinaarakelyan.com) answers a few questions to help us understand her creative process.

Kristina, your online biography says that you love “creating works that speak directly to people’s hearts.” It has taken only one rehearsal for you to communicate directly to the choir members’ hearts. How have you achieved this deep level of musical connection in Christmas Lullaby?

Firstly, thank you for this lovely comment and I am so glad to hear this! As a composer, I spend most of my days exploring musical ideas and seeing what clicks. For choral compositions, often the melody comes first, with an idea of the harmonisation. As the first melodic idea in Christmas Lullaby was rather simple, inspired by the idea of a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, I thought it might be nice to add an element of extended harmony to this, in the form of a gentle high register counter-melody in the piano.

 There are so many Christmas compositions already; what are your musical influences in this world premiere and what is original about your piece?

It is hard to find a single influence, however, I was completely immersed in the music of Benjamin Britten, having written a companion set of pieces to his seminal A Ceremony of Christmas Carols over the summer, so Britten’s musical world was very much on my mind. In addition, the Christmas classics are always there in the back of my mind when composing for this season, as well as my great love of Renaissance polyphony, Bach’s choral music, as well as diverse songs from the global liturgical canon.

The text comprises very familiar Biblical passages and your own lyrics; why did you choose to combine two narrative threads in this way?

I had been thinking a lot about how the nativity story is so heart-warming because it has a very relatable element of the bond between the mother and child. Therefore, the idea of the duality of the nativity story came to mind – ranging from the exploration of the human side of the nativity story to the macro-level, or Godly side. On a personal note, I had been singing lullabies a lot this year to my baby, so that may have made its way into this project too!

We can’t wait to perform our rendition of your truly beautiful composition. What effect would you like Christmas Lullaby to have on the audience?

If the audience feels some of the inspiration, love and positivity that I felt while writing this composition, I would be delighted!

Feeling inspired to hear Kristina’s composition at the concert? You can buy tickets by calling Kirklees Box Office on: 01484 225755 or visiting the Town Hall Box Office in person or emailing us: info@huddersfieldchoral.com

 See you there! Happy Christmas!