Every year at Christmas I treat myself to a viewing of a YouTube video by a family of musicians called The Five Strings. The video is titled “O Come All Ye Faithful – Epic Flash Mob Carol,” and that title pretty much summarizes it—but hardly communicates the warmth and effect of the piece. Here’s a link: you might want to watch the 4:45 video before going on to my spoilers.
I ration my viewing because I don’t want to let the effect grow stale. By the end of the song there are tears in my eyes, my chest is swelling with joy, and I feel rejuvenated with the grace of the season.
So, to paraphrase Jo Walton’s classic question, what is it that makes this performance so great?
The Song
To start at the least important end, it’s awfully cute. The young performers are adorable, and the idea of a set of siblings setting out to bring cheer to the world is charming. Second point: they’re good. The voices are wonderful, and the instrumental performances are great. And of course the surprise and joy of the people listening are lovely to see—not to mention the visible enthusiasm of the performers.
The music itself is brilliant. We all know the song, of course. Here, though, the lyrics are slightly different from the familiar ones—just different enough to catch our attention. And the musical arrangement raises the well-known tune to a new level.
The flash mob method means the song starts off with a single lonely voice, which is gradually joined by more and more voices and instruments. Variety grows as the song proceeds. There’s a quick violin interlude at 1:40 that’s almost like an Irish jig, and it seems to shift time signatures as it segues into the second verse.
The low notes of the cello that enters about 2:20 add depth to the sound. And at 2:34 the phrase is unexpectedly drawn out, leading into a crescendo to the third verse and the sight of the whole company facing the viewer in song, with a lighted star behind them. At 3:13 the harmonization of the refrain shifts, along with the lyrics, lifting the song to a new level of glory. And the very end brings all this grandeur to a hushed conclusion.
The very idea of a flash mob has an effect here. A group of people coming together in a seemingly random fashion, out of careful planning, just to entertain or amuse, is pretty nifty in itself. A 2010 video of a flash mob in a food court doing the Hallelujah Chorus is fun partly just because of the absurdity of imagining that something as complex as the Hallelujah Chorus could come together out of nowhere. It’s reminiscent of the movie musicals in which everyday people seem to be able to break out spontaneously into song-and-dance numbers at will (see TV Tropes’ “Musical World Hypotheses” for an entertaining discussion). One of my favorite examples is “That’s How You Know” in Enchanted, which slyly pokes fun at itself (as does the whole movie). Apparently Giselle came into the mundane world with the ability to cast the spell ‘Summon Production Number’.
But in the Five Strings video, the gradual accretion of a mob of musicians has a greater effect. It’s as if the faithful really are coming together at the summons of the song. There’s no attempt to make it seem spontaneous—it’s obvious that the effort has been planned in advance—but the stepwise addition of more and more strands to the performance is like opening a series of Christmas presents. Except that here, the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts.
It occurs to me that the emotional effect lies near to what Samantha Edmonds calls “the rally” (or “the Riders of Rohan phenomenon”). She puts it this way:
This isn’t just a “sudden happy turn” in a narrative: as I’ve argued, what sets these scenes apart from other kinds of eucatastrophes is that the RoR phenomenon is specifically a choice made by a community. This is the moment your team shows up. Another friend agreed, explaining, “What makes these scenes so important is that often it’s chosen family who is arriving in these moments of great need, when things are darkest and most unwinnable.” . . . .
. . . . .I argue that the greatest “Consolation” of the fantasy genre isn’t the happy ending: it’s Companionship.
Granted, we don’t think of Christmastime this way when we wax sentimental about it. And there’s nothing wrong with that sentiment. But the Christmas story itself is precisely about sudden hope arriving in the moment of great need. And when one enthusiastic group of companions after another arrives to join in the song, that is rather like seeing “your team” show up. Even if they’re strangers to the people listening from the front doors, they belong to a common cause.
Maybe I’m placing too much weight on just a few minutes of celebratory song. But do take a look at the video. I think you’ll enjoy it, and if you too find that it moves you, maybe someday we’ll figure out why.
Rick Ellrod's Observatory 