Christmas carols on piano
Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Joy to the World, The First Noel… To learn before Christmas Eve, from the simplest to the most demanding.
For each one, I show you the map: its form, its chords, its tricky passages. Then a plan of half an hour a day to play it by heart. Most of them rest on a few chords and take a week or two: there's still time.
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Jingle Bells
James Lord Pierpont
Level: beginner · 6 days
The Jingle Bells refrain: two eight-bar halves that only differ at the very end.
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The First Noel
Traditional English carol
Level: beginner · 6 days
The same melody comes round twice, then the refrain borrows its beginning and its end (A A B): once you have learned it, almost the whole carol is under your fingers.
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Silent Night
Franz Xaver Gruber
Level: beginner · 9 days
The world's best-known Christmas carol rests on just three chords: a lovely chance to play a hymn in four voices, two in each hand.
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Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming (Es ist ein Ros entsprungen)
Traditional German carol
Level: beginner · 9 days
The old German carol, in four voices: its melody first circles around a single note, which leaves all your attention for the chords.
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Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Felix Mendelssohn
Level: beginner · 13 days
A Mendelssohn melody, first written for the Gutenberg festival in Leipzig: it springs up a fourth, then climbs in stages, like a fanfare.
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O Come, All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)
John Francis Wade
Level: beginner · 14 days
The Latin Christmas hymn, in four voices: its refrain sounds the same call twice (“Venite adoremus”), then a third time, differently, to close.
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Greensleeves (What Child Is This?)
Traditional English tune
Level: intermediate · 10 days
The old English song that became a Christmas carol (“What Child Is This?”): an E minor that sways in 6/8 and keeps leaning towards G major.
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Joy to the World
Lowell Mason, after Handel
Level: intermediate · 12 days
The carol opens with a D major scale falling a whole octave: the nicest way to brush up your scales at Christmas.
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A la nanita nana
José Ramón Gomis
Level: intermediate · 13 days
A Spanish Christmas lullaby in three-four time: a verse in D minor, then a refrain that brightens into D major, over a rocking left hand of one bass note and two chords.
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O Holy Night
Adolphe Adam
Level: advanced · 26 days
Adolphe Adam's carol in its version for voice and piano: a broad melody that rises phrase after phrase above an accompaniment in triplets.
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