Christmas with Kate Rusby on the Southbank 2019

As noted we were at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday evening for another of these annual Kate Rusby Christmas concerts. The format appeared to be similar to previous years - about 16 carols and other songs, lots of talking, a short period when Kate is off stage and Damien and the boys do some instrumentals, an audience video for Facebook and a two song encore. About half the twelve songs on the new album were done along with pieces from the other albums. One quibble our Barnsley nightingale suggested that many of the carols sung in pubs were kept out of the church by the Victorians. That would suggest that Kate has never heard of Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos or Sankey's Sacred solos and sea shanties as some humorously call it. There aren't many carols in Sankey it is true but Rolling downward, Once in royal David's, While shepherds watched, Hark the herald, etc are all there. Great evening.

Sankey and Bliss

I recently read the biographies of Ira D Sankey (1840-1898) and P P Bliss (1838-1876). They are both Ambassador reprints from a few years ago. The Sankey is quite brief, it is subtitled The Singer and his song. It is by Helen Rothwell. The one on Bliss is longer and is subtitled Songwriter. It is written for the British market and is by William Guest. Both men worked with D L Moody and were evangelistic singers, composers and compilers. Bliss also wrote words and I have listed some of these elsewhere. Many of their tunes are still in use. As a boy we still used Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos in our midweek meeting and so I am familiar with some of the hymns that these men and their contemporaries gave the Christian public. Both biographies are written too close to the time of their subjects to warrant any real analysis. I'm not sure what there is of a modern vintage on them and those around them. They were clearly men of faith and orthodox but they were also involved in innovation and I am not sure what I might have been unhappy about at the time. Things have moved on so much by this time it all seems very innocent and uncompromising at this distance. Perhaps things were inadvertently introduced, however, that we could well do without. The Bliss biography contains a surprise element that was not known to me regarding his early death.