Christmas Tunes for Celtic Harp

Fun to play arrangements of some of my favorite Christmas tunes. Most tunes are intermediate level, A few are beginner level. Notes on each tune are included. All in C tuning.

Contents:

• Away in a Manger
• Good King Wenceslas
• Lo How A Rose E’re Blooming
• Jingle Bells
• O Tannenbaum
• Entre le Boeuf et L’Ane Gris
• O Come O Come Emmanuel
• We Three Kings
• In The Bleak Mid Winter
• The First Noël
• Silent Night
• I Wonder As I Wander
• Huron Carol
• Kling Glöckchen
• We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Away in a Manger

There are two versions of this famous tune The first one was originally attributed to Martin Luther but that is now thought to be untrue. This is the version we hear most often in the US. The second tune, written by Irish-American composer William Kirkpatrick, is the one that is best known outside of the US, especially in Britain.

Good Kind Wenceslas

My very favorite Christmas song, This song tells the story of the good king who sees a poor man gathering sticks to build a fire in his humble home. The king orders the page to gather food and drink to take to the man’s home a league away. As the walk through the cold, snowy night, the page tells the king he is to cold to go on. The king tells the page to walk in his footsteps, which are radiating heat! I love the moral at the end: “Ye who now will bless the poor, will yourselves find blessing.” So lovely!

Lo How A Rose E’re Blooming

A beautiful hymn attributed to Michael Praetorius in 1609. I have a very strong memory of the first time I heard this piece. I was in 5th grade at the time, delivering a note to the office. As I walked by the music room, I heard the 6th grade madrigal singers singing this. I felt like I had been struck by lightning! To this day, I love to play this piece. This version is my arrangement based on Kim Robertson”s fabulous, but much harder to play, arrangement. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Jingle Bells

My sprightly version of this much-loved tune starts with the sound of the “ringing of the changes” from the bells of a historic church in Dunster, England. Fun and actually easy to play.

O Tannenbaum

O Christmas Tree. Since my husband is originally from Munich, this German favorite is always on our Christmas tune list!

Entre le Boeuf et L’Ane Gris

love this sweet little French tune. And since I used to be a French teacher, I also

O Come O Come Emmanuel

dating back 1200 years!! Perhaps the most famous Advent hymn

We Three Kings

I grew up at the time when TV was new and luckily, we had one. Since my parents were opera fans, we watched the premier of the first opera written for TV: Amahll and the Night Visitors, written by Gian Carlo Menotti. All these years later, I still think it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen and I still get goose bumps remembering the climactic scene where Amahl discovers that he has been rewarded for his generous heart by a miracle and now he can walk! If you’ve never seen this short, brilliant masterpiece of an opera, you really should watch it! To this day, I associate the arrival of the Kings with the brilliant music Menotti wrote for them in this opera, with the exotic feeling of the desert and the jingling of the camel’s harnesses as they plodded through the night. So I did my best to create that feeling with my harp in this wonderful song, I hope you can hear and feel that!

In The Bleak Mid Winter

A popular Christmas carol based on the beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti. It was first published in 1872 and has been set to music multiple times, with settings by Gustav Holst and Harold Darke being particularly well- known. This arrangement contains both of these famous settings. The hymn’s themes center around the birth of Jesus Christ in a humble stable, a stark contrast to the bleak, cold winter setting.

The First Noël

A beautiful, well-known carol from Cornwall in England.

Silent Night

My favorite Christmas tune, mainly because of the famous story about how it came to be written. According to the legend, the priest of the parish church in Oberndorf, Austria, wrote the words and asked the organist to put them to music that they could use for the Christmas Eve service after a mouse had chewed a hole in the bellows of the organ! Such a sweet, but probably untrue story for the creation of such a wonderful piece of music.

I Wonder As I Wander

This wonderful tune was written by American folklorist John Jacob Niles. He composed this after hearing a fragment of the tune sung by a young girl standing on a street corner as he collected tunes in Appalachia. It has a feeling of cold and wind and bleak hopeless wondering about why Jesus came to us, which I tried to capture in this arrangement.

Huron Carol

This is Canada’s oldest Christmas song, written around 1642 by a French missionary living and working with the Huron indians. I have always loved this exotic sounding carol, especially since I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan about a quarter mile from the Huron River!

Kling Glöckchen

Germany for the Christmas Markets. Another German Christmas tune we hear a lot when we go to

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

This cheerful, spritely tune likely originated in the West Country of England during the 16th century. It’s thought to be tied to the tradition of carollers visiting homes on Christmas Eve and being given treats like figgy pudding as payment. The exact author and composer remain unknown, but the song’s origins are rooted in this festive tradition. I often use this happy tune as a closer for my Christmas set.