Free Christmas Carols for Young Bands (Elementary-Middle School)
Posted by: awillis2 in ReflectionsMy good friend, Scott Watson-Composer, Music Educator, Author, Clinician, and TI:ME Publications Chair-just wrote me an email about eight Christmas Carols he arranged into four parts to work for almost any instrument combination, with ample doublings for smaller bands. They are written to be rehearsed and performed in one to two sessions. The list includes Jolly Old St. Nicholas, Up On the Housetop, Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Deck the Halls, Angels We Have Heard On High, Joy to the World, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
This is perfect for music educators, like myself, who work in schools where the band is small and eclectic. I have 2 clarinets, 2 trumpets, 1 trombone, 2 violins, 1 viola, and 2 pianists. It is a very small ensemble, but a very devoted ensemble as we rehearse once a week after school on Fridays for the fall and spring trimesters. I end up arranging a lot of music myself using Finale and Sibelius. However, Scott’s arrangements have always been my and my students’ favorites. Back in 2004, my school commissioned Scott to compose a piece for our 75th anniversary. He composed “Country Dance” and my students loved it (we were a band of 35 at that time)! Scott came to our spring concert in 2005 and conducted the song. My students were overjoyed with the experience and it was such a thrill for me to see my students rise to the occasion.
I hope that you will check out Scott’s Christmas arrangements and further explore his website. Just click here and scroll down to Quick n’ Easy Carols for Band where you will find downloadable zip files which include all parts in a pdf format.
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December 1st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
This is great! I can’t tell you how often I run into people online or in real life who struggle with small bands or just weird instrumentation. Kjos publications did a couple of “flexible scoring” books that were good for this purpose but I’m really glad to see some more material out there for these tricky situations!
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:35 am
Glad to contribute and hope many find this useful. Thanks for highlighting this, Amy.
As it so happens, I just handed them out to my 5th grade band at one of my buildings at rehearsal today. We read through about four in 15 minutes. It was good sight-reading practice, the kids loved playing these familiar holiday songs, and were pleased with how good they sounded playing them!