The Trombone Quartet Hymnal, Vol. 2: Christmas
From Hark! the Herald Angels Sing and Silent Night to the Coventry Carol and Jingle Bells. The download has the full score, separate books for Trombones 1, 2 and 3 and bass trombone, and MusicXML files for every carol so you can adapt them to your own group. Each carol fits on one page, so there are no page turns. All the music is public domain and the edition is released under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0), so your quartet can copy, share and perform it freely.
Free download · PDF + MusicXML · zip, about 1.3MB
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The 26 carols
- Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
- O Come, All Ye Faithful
- Once in Royal David's City
- While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
- O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
- God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
- The First Nowell
- Good King Wenceslas
- We Three Kings of Orient Are
- Good Christian Men, Rejoice
- What Child Is This?
- See Amid the Winter's Snow
- I Saw Three Ships
- The Holly and the Ivy
- Silent Night
- Joy to the World
- In the Bleak Midwinter
- Angels from the Realms of Glory
- Away in a Manger
- It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
- Ding! Dong! Merrily on High
- O Little Town of Bethlehem
- Coventry Carol
- Jingle Bells
- O Holy Night
- Angels We Have Heard on High
About the arrangements
Every carol is transcribed from an old printed edition and laid out for four trombones. Most of the harmonies are the ones choirs know: John Stainer's from Christmas Carols New and Old (about 1871), W. H. Monk's from Hymns Ancient and Modern (1868), Arthur Sullivan's from Church Hymns with Tunes (1874), and Holst's own setting of In the Bleak Midwinter from the English Hymnal (1906). Jingle Bells is George Rosey's 1909 arrangement, which has the chorus everyone sings today. O Holy Night gives Trombone 1 the tune over Adam's own accompaniment. Where only the melody was old enough to use, as with The Holly and the Ivy, the harmony is new. The provenance pages in every book list the edition behind each carol.
The parts sit where a section is comfortable. Trombone 1 stays at or below G4 apart from one A♭ in Silent Night, and the bass part goes down to A1. Twelve of the carols are in B♭ and most of the rest are in F, E♭, C or G minor.
Free to copy, share and perform
The edition is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Print it for the whole section, perform it, record it, rearrange it: all allowed. The only condition is credit: The Trombone Quartet Hymnal, arr. Matthew Waters, basstrombone.co.uk.
Want hymns as well? Vol. 1 has 59 of them, free in the same way.