Sometimes it's the programme which makes a particular concert jump out from the plethora of music events scheduled for the Christmas season, and there are two in that category this year. On December 6th at 8 p.m., in the Shaw Room of the National Gallery, the Universi- ty of Dublin Choral Society will perform Handel's rousing anthem Zadok The Priest, Mozart's glorious Coronation Mass and Britten's haunting A Ceremony of Carols. The concert is in aid of the Friends of the National Gallery and the ticket price of £12.50 includes mulled wine and mince pies at the interval - to fortify the audience, perhaps, to join in with the selection of popular carols planned for the latter end of the evening. ainne Gormley with piano accompaniment by David Brophy. On December 16th, the choral group Eblana presents a concert of motets in the chapel of Trinity College, Dublin at 8 p.m. "We don't regard ourselves as Anuna or anything like that," says Eblana's director John O'Flynn, "but we'll have a little bit of candles and choreography and so on." The music will be by Monteverdi, Praetorius, Kodaly, Tchaikovsky and Richard Rodney Bennett and the choir wills be accompanied by Richard Sweeney on lute and Emma Coulthard on recorder and as soprano soloist.

The lovely old church of St Nicholas of Myra in Francis Street, is the venue for the Dublin Diocesan Music Group, in concert on December 8th at 8 p.m. in aid of St Francis Hospice in Raheny. The programme blends the traditional and the contemporary and there will be piano, flute and harp accompaniment. The concerts at the National Concert Hall by the Lassus Scholars on December 10th at 8 p.m. and the Goethe Institute Choir on December 14th at 8 p.m. are ringing the changes on the all-too-familiar Christmas theme. Both choirs pay tribute to the Schubert bicentenary with performances of Schubert Masses; both surround these inspirational centrepieces with more familiar material for a bit of Christmas cheer. The Lassus Scholars and the children's choir Piccolo Lasso, with soloists Niamh Murray, Victoria Massey, John Scott, Jeffrey Ledwidge, the DIT Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra and John Walsh (trumpet) will perform Schubert's Mass in C, selections from Britten's Ceremony of Carols and a selection of popular carols. e by now about the successes of the two groups which she founded just a year ago, waxes lyrical about the atmosphere at this concert: "It's quite magical, actually, when the adults' choir is joined by these children who have been hovering around, waiting for their moment." The Goethe Institute Choir's Christmas concert features Schubert's Mass in A flat and Brian Boydell's five settings of poems by James Joyce. "The Mass is very exciting, with a good deal of scope for the soloists and also for the choir," says director Cait Cooper. On the night before Christmas, meanwhile, the midnight service at Christ Church Cathedral is Langlais's Messe Solennelle, a modern and dramatic French Mass. Shake the dust of Christmas consumerism off your feet, all ye who enter here - and remind yourself of what Christmas should be all about.