kareina

I am home, everything has been put away. We brought Kjartan's keyboard to the performance, so that the conductor could play our starting notes, and I brought it home afterwards, since I am working from home today. We had only 8 of us for the choir performance (plus Lucia, of course, but she doesn't sing, just stands there looking pious). Two singing bass, two tenor, three soprano, an me for the lone alto. Luckily, it was clear pretty early on that we were short on altos, so he gave us a bunch of arrangements were the altos and tenors sing together, and for a couple of songs he had one of the tenors actually singing the alto part. (Johan can also sing bass, he's got an amazing range).

I told a new friend in the States about the performance, and the fact that even though this is a protestant country, they are really big on celebrating St. Lucia, and he thought it interesting, and wondered where the tradition came from. I didn't know so much about it, so I took the time to look it up, and found a web page that summaries the story. It is in Swedish, of course, so I will give a short summary, and let you also look at the link, if you are inclined.

St. Lucia is from Syracuse, in Sicily, who was an early Christian martyr (died 304 AD), and is thought to provide protection to the blind and those who are otherwise damaged in sight.

13 December was originally the shortest night of the year, so has always been a special holiday in the north, where the nights are short. Even though the calendar reform of 1753 caused the solstice to move to 21/22 December, the tradition of 13 Dec held on here, and was celebrated with extra festivities, because the night was thought to be especially dangerous, with supernatural creatures wandering the earth, and animals granted the power of speech for the night.

The earliest surviving Swedish record of something on that date specifically focusing on St. Lucia on 13 December was written at the home of a nobleman in 1764 in the region of Västergötland, where a candle-bedecked Lucia carried a tray of coffee to the the master of the house (and family). This quickly became a tradition, first in all of the other noble houses, and then across the country.

By the end of the 1800's they started doing a major Lucia thing at the open-air museum, Skansen, in Stockholm (which park built as a tribute to Swedish Nationalism), but it took till 1927 before that form of the tradition became popular among the common people everywhere--that was the year that they had a contest in Stockholm to choose the lucky girl to be Lucia, and she was followed by a train of other people in costumes ranging from "bridesmaids" (wearing the same white dress as Lucia, but no crown), star-boys (holding, or wearing stars), wise men, gingerbread men, and Santa (or other holiday gnomes). That one in 1927 got such a huge write-up in the newspaper that it took very little time before the other cities had to have their own contest to choose Lucia, and their own train of followers, and now pretty much every town, ever school, and many large companies have their own Luciatåg.

The tradition is now so firmly rooted that it is very important for many people, and has become a symbol for Sweden itself, and the tradition is slowly spreading to other countries as Swedes move away, and decide to celebrate anyway, and get their new friends to participate. The main Lucia song (the one we sing as she actually processes in and out at the end of the performance), was originally an Italian tune, which got Swedish words in the 1920's. There are three different Swedish versions of the lyrics.

Our choir sings the 1924 version "Sankta Lucia, ljusklara hägring" written by Sigrid Elmblad. Therefore I haven't heard the other two "Natten går tunga fjät", written by Arvid Rosén, 1928, and "Ute är mörkt och kallt" written by Halldis Ljungqvist, 1958.

(The link to the song includes a pretty good English translation for the text.)

One of the big holiday traditions here in Sweden centers around St. Lucia--across the country on December 13th there are hundreds of performances by various choirs, each with a person dressed as Lucia, with a crown of lit candles on her head, wearing the traditional white dress and red belt. The other women in the choir also wear the white dresses and red belts, and everyone in the choir carries a lit candle. Usually there is little to no other light in the room besides the candles the choir carries (and, in the case of Lucia, wears). The performance is usually early in the morning--here at our uni it happens at 07:30, and takes about a half an hour. Despite the early hour the hall is packed with people who come to listen (and drink the traditional glogg and eat pepperkakor and lucia bullar) before they head to work or classes or whatever for the day.

This year someone in the audience with the capability to record video was a friend to one of the choir members, and he put a short video on line which shows our procession in and has excerpts from each of the songs we did. I am posting the link here because I suspect my mom would want to watch, and there is a chance that someone else might be interested.

However, I have no idea if any of you would click the link to watch a student choir singing in the (mostly) dark, so if you would be so kind as to leave a comment to let me know if you did, it would amuse me to find out who (if anyone) does watch it, and if you watch/listen to all 11 minutes, or only glance at part of it). Some of the songs are in Swedish, some in English, and one in Sami, and all have a strong Christmas theme +/- religious symbolism (personally I would like the tradition better without the religious part, but I so love to sing I am willing to sing pretty sounding songs despite the religious trappings).