Along with the less known tunes of Christmas carols, the choir performs hymns which have become great all-time favourites. Hardly can anyone imagine the celebration of Christmas without "Silent Night, Holy Night", the most famous Christmas carol. Performed for the first time 185 years ago at the midnight mass in the church of a little Austrian village, this rather simple melody was spread all over the world and now is being sung in more than 300 languages and dialects. The choir also sings "La Notte di Natale" from Italy and another German Christmas carol, along with a lot of most impressive Bulgarian traditional Christmas songs.
Every year Christians throughout the world celebrate a holy night in expectation of the radiance of true Light. For all of them this is a night of joy and hope.
In the Christian world there exists an amazing variety of musical cultures, including Christmas song cycles that express the most beautiful impulses of the human soul in different musical languages, in different styles, melodies and rhythms.
Similar to the other Balkan and Slavic peoples, in the folk culture of the Bulgarians the traditional carols are sung on Christmas Eve when young men, koledari (carol–singers) dressed in folk costumes, pay ritual visits to all houses in the neighbourhood. They sing different Christmas songs and add further impact to the well-wishing for fertility of the lands, prosperity, health and personal happiness of every member of the family – for the host, for the oldest woman on the house, for the young bachelor, for the children. And finally before leaving the house they sing "we are now going out of this house and God comes in…"
The combination of mythical and Christian images with ritual elements unites pagan and Christian principles contained in the so called "folk Christianity". As far as the music of the Bulgarian folk Christmas songs is concerned, it is characterized by ....... więcej