I made two overseas trips in December, both near the border of Germany. First a short break in Aachen. The Cathedral there had a handsome organ, though its unique shape may give it some acoustic peculiarities (I didn’t hear the organ played so couldn’t verify this). One of the advertised concerts was going to be given by the choir of Trinity College Cambridge, who had also discovered that it’s not that far to go.
Christmas itself was spent near Colmar. Most of the musical content came from odd bits of France Musique on the car radio (their equivalent of the BBC Singers sounds very similar to them). I went to Midnight Mass – which really did start at midnight – and we sang a couple of familiar French carols and paid tribute to the area’s mixed history with a strangely-accented rendering of Stille Nacht.