Dear Brett,

Christmas may be a good time to have your SATB choir sing West Gallery, and if so there is plenty of material published in recent years in the UK.

I think that what would impress are pieces slightly longer than standard psalm tunes, giving chance for changes of rhythm and speed, major/minor shifts or loud/soft alternations. The WG style was perhaps at its best in the early C19, and the following sources have many items from that era.

As Mike says, having a few instruments could enhance your performance, and one collection that caters for a string band with parts printed on separate instrumental pages comes from Village Carols. There is a new edition just published that contains 50 carols, and, if I interpret the VC website correctly, would cost £12 plus £14 to airmail to NZ.

In this Sheffield Village Carols 2nd edition I would pick out Old Foster, Pentonville and Birley Edge; the last is Handelian in style and the joint churches in our small town enjoyed it as the special show piece in our carol concert last December.

Another very pleasing item in an earlier VC collection that we have used is Joy to the World by Richard Furness, c. 1830. It has a fugal second section with eight beats between entries and a flirt with minor. This collection is now out-of-print, but we could easily send the two pages.

Rather more sophisticated Xmas pieces are contained in "A Christmas Celebration: 11 Carols from Georgian England" published by Faber Music. In this I would recommend: 10. A Christmas Anthem and 11. For Christmas Day, composed respectively by composers from the English Midlands, William Matthews and Thomas Jarman. Sally Drage was involved in this publication which is now out of print, but I would think would be held somewhere in NZ in a music library.

David Welch