Gloria in excelsis!
Our Christmas Eve lessons and carols service went very smoothly, though I am now exhausted and a bit wheezy. Most of the service is choral piece after choral piece, and our director really put us through our paces. Singing for a packed house is rather energizing, and we had some superb brass and strings accompanying on several of the pieces. Times like these make me love being in a big church.

You can read about our repertoire here. A webcast of the service was available live. I'll post a link when the recorded version is available.

The most difficult piece we sang was Laurisden's "O magnum mysterium." Dissonance and unusual harmonics are not easy, but it also requires a lot of pianissimo, which takes tremendous breath control to achieve. It's also the longest piece we sang. It's incredibly beautiful though, with some harmonies that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, they're so otherworldly.

On the downside, the "service engine soon" light came on in our "new" car when we headed over to church tonight. Please pray that it's nothing serious. The car is still under warranty, but we don't want to be stuck with it in the shop for any length of time because we had planned to leave Saturday to visit some of my family.

Now, to bed!

Fröliche Weihnachten!