Following their successful Praetorius tour in 2022, Gabrieli Roar presents A Grand Georgian Christmas. Led by Gabrieli Artistic Director Paul McCreesh, over 4,000 late-primary and secondary students will join Gabrieli’s world-class musicians across eleven performances in regional cathedrals around the UK, from Cumbria to Cornwall.

The programme is a festive exploration of English music for parish churches during the Georgian period (c. 1740-1850), a tradition sometimes referred to as ‘Psalmody’ or ‘Gallery Music’. It offers the perfect platform to encourage young singers to connect with choral and classical music, as well as with heritage culture; and Gabrieli are delighted to be sharing these resources to Music Teacher magazine readers.

For the tour, Gabrieli's dozen singers will lead the choirs, and the band will comprise strings, flutes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, drums, organ, harpsichord, ophicleide and, (how could we not?) two very special serpents. It's worth reading Thomas Hardy's wonderful description of a village band in 'Under the Greenwood Tree', which still paints a vivid picture of 19th Century music making.

There are three excellent and well-known recordings of this repertoire by Peter Holman and the Parley of Instruments: Nativity, While Shepherds Watched, and Haydn and his English Friends, which are widely available and contain most of the pieces we will perform. Gabrieli are grateful to Peter for his help, and especially to Sally Drage who is the great expert on this repertoire and who has kindly provided most of the material here, with permission to use for the tour and in schools.

We are hoping that this material will be useful for your own carol concerts. The solo parts are often quite simple and might be sung by more confident singers. Likewise, the instrumental parts are hardly virtuoso; the beauty is that there is no right or wrong, and parts can be taken by whatever players you have to hand in your school.