Richard Morrison

There are far too many wonderful carols that have faded into obscurity

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The little church choir in which I sang more than half a century ago had an unbreakable engagement every Christmas Eve: we would walk round the local cottage hospital singing carols. Some patients were clearly very ill, so the rules for us kids were ‘nothing louder than mezzo-piano, don't stare and keep moving’. If patients did want to talk, our genial vicar walked just behind us – ‘fielding compliments, complaints, concerns and any choccies on offer’, as he put it.

But there was one moment when we did stand still and sing strongly. The hospital had a long corridor connecting its two wings, and its echo was astonishing. Our harmonies, which sounded so weedy as we moved through the wards, suddenly acquired extraordinary richness. And by some acoustical alchemy the result carried to the far corners of the hospital.

‘It sounds like a swimming pool,’ I exclaimed when I first encountered this magic corridor. ‘It sounds like King’s,’ an old bass retorted. I was completely baffled. Did monarchs have some sort of builtin echo when they sang four-part harmonies?

In this corridor we always performed the same carol: