Another Christmas season, another Advent Pageant (fancy name for the Christmas play the kids do at the church).
This year, the play itself is not a musical, for the first time in many years. Straight drama, but there will be some Christmas songs before and after, and we have a bunch of kids who can play instruments. So they've asked me to whip up some kind of instrumental parts to "augment" the songs. I'm thinking adding a countermelody here and there, and of course the old standby of letting a solo instrument play the intro. Yay.
The new youth minister is pretty nuts, and she asked me if I could come up with some kind of prelude for the kids to play. A challenge! I've got a 4th grader who plays violin, a 7th grader who can play piano and viola, a 6th grader who plays percussion (including tuned percussion), an 8th grader who plays the flute, and another 8th grader who plays flute and electric bass. Whoa.
Silent Night. Marimba lays down a 3/4 pattern. Violin comes in with the melody. Viola comes in on the third strain with a "bass" line. First verse finishes as a trio. Flutes in harmony for the second verse, viola continues bass line, marimba line is simplified, violin echoes first two strains then wanders off into a countermelody/harmony thing. Occassionally, the viola gets to do something interesting in the bottom, and once in a while things come together into a classic quartet, with the marimba as continuo.
It's crazy because of the relatively limited skill levels of the kids, but Christmas music lends itself to that. Simple parts, but if you play everything reasonably in tune, it will sound pretty nice. Cooked most of it up in my head last night, wrote it up this morning, we rehearse it on Sunday.
I love show biz. ♫♫