I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the celebrated pianist Nicolas Horvath for enthusiastically
bringing my Debussy works to public attention in their solo piano formats, both through his recent
recitals across France and through this Naxos Grand Piano release (GP822). In some cases these are
true piano pieces (like Toomai des éléphants), in others they are piano reductions of orchestral scores
(like Fêtes galantes), while in others they are piano solos in their own right that also exist in orchestral
versions (as in the incidental music for Le Roi Lear). Needless to say, most of these tracks are world
première recordings, and this is certainly true of A Night in the House of Usher and its companion piece Un Jour affreux avec Le Diable dans le beffroi (?A Dreadful Day with the Devil in the Belfry?) which I arranged specially for Nicolas in November 2018 as a virtuosic, almost Lisztian paraphrase-fantasy. To remind us of the plot as the dramatic scenes unfold, Un Jour affreux avec le Diable dans le beffroi, like the start of No-ja-li) has a narrator (spoken in French by Florient Azoulay on the Grand Piano recording):

[After an overture rising from the underworld, with a polka and a citation of a chldren?s folksong Savez vous plantez les choux?, a carillon rings out]: Hearing it, the Dutch villagers start to count, with the bells of the belfry / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 8, 9, 11, and 12 / Perfect! / 13!?!/ The bell rang 13 times / 13! / The Devil is here where the clock should be! / Damn! / The bells are cracked. / The Devil laughs fit to burst / He pulls from the pocket of his coat, a small dancing master?s violin / ?My God!? says the devil ? and he tunes his violin slowly / The Devil leads the villagers in a fantastic and relentless jig [making jokes at the expense of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky] / The Devil directs the villagers towards the canal ? where he jumps to the other side, laughing all the time / The villagers try to imitate him, but they fall into the water. / [In Part 2] the villagers are transported to a hedonistic and lively Italian village. They are similarly transformed: the men have crooked hats ? the women have wide open bodices! They dance a mad Tarantella / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 13 / shouting ?Hey there! (Hola?) / Jean, the young hero, makes a fervent prayer to God against the Devil / The prayer is answered and the bell again rings normally! / The expression of the Devil changes: he shudders! / Everything goes black / The devil disappears in a brief red glow ? / And the carillon and the bells chime as usual / 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 / Perfect! / But the Devil?s grinning face ap-
pears once again where the clock should be ? briefly

These 23 easy to play jazz chord arrangements, plus a bonus Sacred Holiday Medley, were created for the intermediate pianist. The melodies and rhythms are as you remember them, only the harmony has been changed from the traditional chords. Lyrics are included for sing-alongs. Finger numbers have been added to make learning even faster and easier. There is plenty of room left for the more advanced player to improvise. Please print with even numbered pages on the left and odd on the right. This will nearly eliminate page turns. The selections include: Angels We Have Heard on High , Auld Lang Syne, Away In A Manger, Deck The Halls, Go Tell It On The Mountain, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Good King Wenceslas, Hark, The Herald Angels Sing, Here We Come A-wassailing, I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, Jingle Bells, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, Joy To The World, O Come, All Ye Faithful, Oh, Christmas Tree, Over the River and Through the Woods, Sacred Holiday Medley, Silent Night, The First Noel, Up On The Housetop, We Three Kings, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, and What Child Is This. There are 46 pages of music, 50 pages in all. If you enjoy these arrangements, please visit http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/publishers/Phil-Hamm-sheet-music/3002027 for all my offerings here at SheetMusicPlus. If you have any questions about this or my other arrangements, please contact me at my FaceBook page. https://www.facebook.com/phil.hamm.3 .