Heavenly voices

It seems that Christ was born with the sound of choral music in his ears. That, at any rate, is what is to be deduced from many of the works of art that the manger scene has subsequently inspired. There is the holy family gathered round the crib, gold and lapis lazuli everywhere, beneficent animals kind of smiling at the smiling Christ child and, raised rather above all this, angels singing. Perhaps officially they are sexless — Wikipedia isn’t very discursive on the gender of the cherubim and seraphim — but as far as I can see they look like girls and are meant to be men. This makes for all sorts of interesting speculation, not least in the matter of what they sounded like.

It used to be a favourite game trying to work out how choirs of the past sounded from looking at contemporary depictions of musicians’ facial expressions and general posture.