Christmas is always a problem. It seems sort of churlish to ignore it, yet the difficulty of thinking up something new every year never goes away. Here is a Christmas BBC Music Magazine puzzle from a few years ago. The scheduling of a monthly magazine (and these are lunar months – there are 13 issues a year) means that sometimes it seems best to strut your Christmas stuff in the January issue, as this goes on sale a few days before the holiday when people are buying double issues of this and seasonal specials of that to read over the mince pies.
Actually, the BBC has now moved to having their thirteenth issue a Christmas one (it used to be a Proms one) and so it arrives in November with (in 2013 at least) a nice CD of contemporary carols. (I imagine they also go through agonies of trying to think of what they can put on the festive CD this year…) My thanks to them for permission to reprint it. The website is here, and please pop out and buy the Christmas 2013 magazine to find out (inter alia) about who actually wrote some popular carols.
ACROSS
1/1d Choral work: chants and maracas with it, possibly? About time (9,7)
6 English 1&1 with mostly exciting end (5)
9 American soprano’s French predecessors? (7)
10 Woman to prohibit middle of opera as ‘poisonous stuff’ (7)
11 Most of song and most of lyric mangled without much thought (6)
12 Fellow worker round front of Garden is not moving (8)
14 Using the bow in particular concerto (4)
16 Repeat CD or possibly capture concert another way? (4-6)
18 Concert had unusual light Terpsichorean element? (5-5)
19 Sparkling stuff seen in Glinka’s time (4)
22 Prefatory item – I fear it mistakenly includes piano (8)
23 Russian composer’s left: avoid playing (6)
26 Forte isn’t found with edition – blanked out (7)
27 British composer, one about to touch down (7)
28 See 5 down
29 Rattle’s ending with the old overture – that’s a surprise (3-6)
DOWN
1 See 1 across
2 Characters in orchestra re-record less often (5)
3 Some fastidious ear – legendary British composer (6)
4 Choral work foremost in Mozart and Schubert scores (4)
5/25/28 New arrangement for ‘Well I beseech Thee’ in end of grave 1&1 by Bach (5,5,4,5)
6 Composer of 1&1 gets hard on Jamaican music – thrown over without hint of acceptance? (8)
7 Organ parts finally concluded a Passion broadcast (9)
8 Brought into play revolutionary bass, mostly seen around old rock group (7)
13 Father with baffling question about advert’s drum roll (10)
15 Strength in contralto, top-class, in Poulenc role (9)
17 Opera chairman cries with hit broadcast (8)
18 Lachrymose start to ritardando in a flute’s variation (7)
20 Verdian upset – one’s barged in (7)
21 New German piano linked to 51 listed performers (4-2)
24 Racket involving artist with metal tube (5)
25 See 5 down
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