Angels We Have Heard on High (Les anges dans nos campagnes)

A carol with no known author

It first appears in print in 1805, in a book of French carols by Father Roche, under another title: J'entends, là sur ces collines. No author is named, and it is unclear whether Father Roche wrote it or only collected it. There were twelve verses, and dozens of variants throughout the 19th century.

Under the title it is known by in France, Les anges dans nos campagnes ("the angels in our countryside"), with words and notes, it was published in 1842, the music signed with two initials, "W. M.". Twenty years later, in 1862, James Chadwick, the Catholic bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, in the north-east of England, wrote a free English paraphrase: Angels We Have Heard on High.

Wolfi has you play the tune known in English as "Gloria". The left-hand chords are my own: the best-known arrangement, by Edward Shippen Barnes, is not yet in the public domain.

A calm verse, a soaring refrain

Twenty-one bars in F major, in four beats. My map splits them into two-bar groups:

• A and A' (bars 1 to 4, then 5 to 8): the verse, sung twice. Repeated As, a C, and notes moving by step; two chords are enough, F and C7.
• B and C (9 to 12): the "Gloria". The "o" of "Gloria" lasts sixteen notes, in three waves that each start a step lower: C-D-C-B♭-A, then B♭-C-B♭-A-G, then A-B♭-A-G-F, and a G to finish. Under these waves, the harmony passes through B-flat and G minor, and stops in suspense on C7 (a half cadence).
• A'' (13 and 14): "in excelsis Deo", a scale climbing from F to B-flat, then an open ending that calls for the repeat.
• B, C, A'' and the coda (15 to 21): the refrain again, which this time ends on F.

How to approach it

I rate it as intermediate, with a 9-day plan.

1. The verse first: it fits under five fingers, thumb on F. This is the moment to settle the tempo.
2. The waves of the "Gloria": learn one, then the other two, which have exactly the same shape, a step lower. Keep the same fingering for all three.
3. The passages I flag: bar 9, the leap up to the high C that launches the "Gloria"; bars 12 and 18, the drop to middle C, over a four-note chord in the left hand. Prepare each leap during the note before it.
4. The eighth notes: play them even and smooth, like a singer keeping their breath.

That's how my plan moves forward: the map, the chord framework, each phrase one after another, the tricky passages, then everything put together and brought up to tempo, all the way to playing it by heart.