Your Favorite Christmas Hymns and Carols for Strings, Book 2

Arranged by Colin Kirkpatrick

This is the second volume of the collection of best-loved Christmas hymns and carols arranged for strings, to brighten up your next Christmas event. This publication includes full four-part instrumental scores plus parts for first violin, second violin, viola, cello and optional double bass. Both cello and bass parts appear on a single staff. The arrangements can be used with string quartet, string quintet or string ensemble. There?s also an optional but useful simplified keyboard part intended for less experienced keyboard players. The left hand plays only the bass part most of the time, with the right hand part kept as simple as possible. It could be used as the basis of an accompaniment which means that you can use the arrangements as solos, duets or trios. You can create a brighter string tone by asking the more advanced first and second violin players to play an octave higher when necessary. You can hear this effect in the audio samples.

The arrangements are intended either as stand-alone pieces that could be used as interludes in a concert or service, or they could be used to accompany solo, choral or congregational singing. The arrangements been written in string-friendly keys as often as possible. While the hymns mostly use the traditional harmonies, the carols have been treated more freely.

Book 2 contains the following 21 titles: As with Gladness Men of Old (Melody: Dix); Away in a Manger (Melody: Cradle Song); Ding! Dong! Merrily on High (Melody: Bransle de l'Officiel); God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen; A Great and Mighty Wonder (Melody: Es ist ein Ros); Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (Melody: Mendelssohn); Infant Holy, Infant Lowly (Melody: W. Zlobie Lezy); It Came Upon the Midnight Clear (Melody: Noel); Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine (Melody: Resonet in Laudibus); Joy to the World (Melody: Antioch); O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Melody: Veni Emmanuel); O Little Town of Bethlehem (Melody: Forest Green) ; Once in Royal David's City (Melody: Irby); Quem Pastores Laudavere; Lully, lulla Thou Little Tiny Child (Melody: Coventry Carol); Hark! A Thrilling Voice is Calling (Melody: Merton); The First Nowell; The Wassail Song; We Three Kings (Melody: Kings of Orient), While Shepherds Watched their Flocks (Melody: Winchester Old) and While Shepherds Watched their Flocks (Melody: Christmas).

The audio samples include Ding! Dong! Merrily on High, Infant Holy, Infant Lowly, Lully, lulla Thou Little Tiny Child and The First Nowell. Please note that the arrangements are usually not usually compatible with the brass collection of the same name.

German.

An important addition to our newly produced orchestral materials is the first publication of vocal scores of Wagner?s ten great operas, in every important version, based on the Complete Edition. * The score corresponds to the performance materials from the Complete Edition. * For practical use in rehearsal cues and bar numbers throughout. * The publisher has secured the services of renewed musicologists associated with the Richard Wagner Complete Edition who convey detailed information in critical forewords. * The forewords are given in three languages(German, English, French). * Uniform and attractive front cover designs with reproductions of paintings from the Wagner era underline the series design of the edition. DIE MEISTERSINGER VON N�RNBERG ?Die Meistersinger von N�rnberg is today still considered a German festival and national opera: this evaluation is borne out by the opera?s performance history, the history of its reception and customary performance practice. Critical minds will perhaps recall the quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche?s publication \"Jenseits von Gut und B�se\" [Beyond Good and Evil] in which the Vorspiel [Prelude] to Meistersinger is described as ?magnificent, ornate and ponderous art? and Wagner?s music in general as being ?rough and coarse?. This music according to Nietzsche possesses ?no trace of the fine southern clarity of the sky and nothing of grace?, but instead ?a cumbersome garb, with a touch of licentious barbarism and solemnity? and ?even a certain degree of ungainliness?. Nietzsche?s evaluation is regarded by many as an insight into the essence of the matter, although it is evident that Nietzsche was exaggerating in order to be provocative. What is more important today is however that this characterisation appears to have been the result of an approach to the performance of Meistersinger which had neglected or even gone as far as to misappropriate elements of this work. This is also the conclusion reached in the Meistersinger Edition of the Critical Complete Edition of the Musical Works of Richard Wagner (Richard Wagner, S�mtliche Werke, Vol. 9, I-III, edited by Egon Voss, Mainz 1979-1987). It has in fact been established that the first print of the score published by B. Schott?s S�hne in Mainz in 1868 contained numerous errors and omissions, particularly with regard to dynamic markings and articulation. The difference between staccato dots and dashes which has an influence on the tone was simply ignored. The substantial omission of these staccato markings unambiguously draws attention to the fact that Wagner intended a lighter-weight sound than was produced in adherence the first edition. The same also holds true for the dynamic markings which were submitted to a general levelling process in the first edition, thereby entirely masking their original broad scope of differentiation. [?] When the saying ?the music sets the tone? is cited, it is in actual fact tempo, dynamics which are implied. If the new findings incorporated into the Meistersinger edition of the Critical Complete Edition are taken seriously, this will inevitably produce a new Meistersinger sound.? (Egon Voss, quoted from the foreword of the new Meistersinger vocal score; translated by Lindsay Chalmers-Gerbracht).