O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum)

A faithful fir tree, long before Christmas

In Germany, the evergreen fir tree has long been a symbol of faithfulness. As early as the 16th century, songbooks included a text beginning "O Tannenbaum, du trägst ein' grünen Zweig": O fir tree, you wear a green branch. Christmas has no part in it.

In 1820, the educator August Zarnack published a school song, Der Tannenbaum: a lover's complaint that contrasts the faithful fir with a fickle young woman. In 1824, Ernst Anschütz, a teacher and organist in Leipzig, kept that first verse and added two more, which link the tree to the joy of Christmas. That is why, in German, Christmas only arrives in the second verse. The tune sung today is that of an old student song, Lauriger Horatius.

The song went on to be translated into many languages. In French, it appeared in Strasbourg in 1856 as Le Sapin, in a book of German songs translated for schoolchildren. And the tune went further still: since 1939, it has carried the official state song of Maryland, in the United States.

An upbeat, two phrases, and a middle that climbs

The song fits in twelve bars in G major, in three beats, after an upbeat. My map reads an A B A form:

• The upbeat (bar 0): a single D, on "O", before the first beat.
• A (bars 1 to 4): "O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum". The dotted rhythm at the start (a dotted eighth note, a sixteenth note), repeated Gs, then Bs, and an ending that settles on G. Three chords: G, A minor and D7.
• B (5 to 8): the middle starts again from the high D and climbs to the E; it passes through C and D7, and comes back to G (a perfect cadence, bar 8).
• A (9 to 12): the opening, repeated note for note.

Once A is learned, there are only four new bars left.

How to approach it

I rate it as intermediate, with a 8-day plan. The notes are simple; what needs care is the triple time, the upbeat and the dotted rhythm.

1. Count three beats out loud, and place the upbeat on the "and" of beat three: "one, two, three and | ONE".
2. The dotted rhythm in bars 1 and 9, which I flag: a long note, a very short one, then a quarter note. Say "taaa-ti ta" as you tap it, before playing it.
3. The right hand: thumb on the D below the G; phrase A fits almost entirely under your hand. For B, move it up, with your thumb on the B.
4. The left hand: one chord per beat or per bar. In bar 5, which I also flag, the G7 chord has four notes: play it on its own first, then join it to the rest.

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.