Click here to download Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2.

I started doing reharmonizations of Christmas tunes for brass quartet (2 trumpets, trombone or baritone, tuba or bass trombone) a couple of years ago. For your convenience I’ve compiled them all in one book: This is Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2. It includes eight tunes:

1 – Andachtsjodler – an Austrian Christmas Carol

2 – Still, Still, Still – an Austrian Christmas Carol

3 – Alle Jahre Wieder – a German Christmas Carol

4 – Leise Rieselt der Schnee – a German Christmas Carol

5 – O Tannenbaum – a German Christmas Carol

6 – Es Wird Scho Glei Dumpa – an Austrian Christmas Carol

7 – Adeste Fideles – O Come, All Ye Faithful

8 – Carol of the Bells – a Ukrainian Folk Song

All of the arrangements consist of parts using traditional arranging techniques and of reharmonized parts.

The download includes printable sheet music (pdf), audio files (mp3) of the tunes played on piano and the original musescore files. All of this under a considerate Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License!

Merry Christmas!

Download brass quartet sheet music: O Tannenbaum.

Please note that “O Tannenbaum” is also part of the compilation Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2.

Here’s what it sounds like when played on a piano:

The Story Behind

I love Christmas Carlos and I love performing them with brass quartets in December. With Corona lurking around every corner, 2020 was quite different and hard both for professional and amateur musicians. Many turned to delivering their content online.

The local brass band “Trachtenkapelle Thalheim” did the same and posted a total of five videos online – one for each Sunday before Christmas starting November 29th and one on Christmas Eve. I supported by doing audio recordings and by providing arrangements.

“O Tannenbaum” was a natural choice for the Sunday right before Christmas Eve, when people would set up their Christmas trees.

The arrangement itself started out as a last-minute thing just two days before Christmas Eve in 2019. This year I upgraded it with a trumpet solo to feature my friend Erwin. I know him for over 20 years and both of us mostly focus on Jazz these days. We regularly meet at Jazz Jam Sessions. Or I should say, we used to regularly meet at Jazz Jam Sessions before Corona hit.

I think he did a nice solo! Here’s the youtube video featuring Erwin:

Merry Christmas everyone!

Download brass quartet sheet music: Andachtsjodler.

Please note that “Andachtsjodler” is also part of the compilation Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2.

Here’s what it sounds like when played on a piano:

The Story Behind

Around 2000 I was one of the most active trombone players within my 30 km radius (my radius as a trombone player is more link 500 meters these days). On the 23rd of December of 2000 I was hired to play with a brass quartet in the “Welser Altstadt” (see Google maps, we played within 10 m of that location). I was a teenager back then and at a point in my life where 100 EURs plus open bar felt like I had conquered the world. I even got to kiss a girl later that night. But that is not the point.

The point is that I heard (because I played it) an Austrian Christmas tune called “Andachtsjodler” for the very first time in my life that night. I had never heard or played it before, but when we played it the innkeeper who had hired us (he was pretty drunk by the time) started to cry. It was not only him, the song also touched me.

More than 10 years later I improvised a piano version of the “Andachtsjodler”:

Recently I distilled it into a first brass quartet version, which I later edited for a video project of a local brass band:

I hope it helps you beam yourself to Austria and experience some of the magic that still surrounds Christmas.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Download brass quartet sheet music: Still, Still Still.

Please note that “Still, Still, Still” is also part of the compilation Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2.

Here’s what it sounds like when played on a piano:

The Story Behind

I started working on this arrangement on the 24th of December 2019. I did not finish it in time to be played in 2019. So here it is for your convenience for the somewhat unconventional 2020 Christmas Season.

The intention behind this arrangement was that it could serve as the first piece for the upcoming collection “Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 2”. Thus I wanted it to begin sparsely, similar to the Andachtsjodler. “Still, Still, Still” starts with an intro (B*): A sparse version of the song that becomes denser and denser until all instruments are active and the voicings have a certain spread at the end of this first version. The second version (A) is the straightforward version of the song that I usually have in my Christmas carol arrangements. I feel that the song “Still, Still, Still” has a lot of grace, and I tried to honor this by deploying ornaments and delayed harmonic resolutions.

The last version (C) is where I added some harmonic seasoning. The song has an ABA form. I had to redo the first A multiple times to strike the balancing act between “artificial sophistication” and “chords that sound fresh and convey: don’t take this too seriously”. For B I was going for a continuous increase in energy level towards the reprise of A, which I perceive as the climax of the song. Also, I wanted to architecturally mend the transition from B to A so that it can’t be broken apart. It’d like BA to be perceived as one 8-bar phrase. Way too often one can hear musicians playing Christmas Carols as fragmented, four-bar sequences with long breaks for breathing in between. Don’t be that kind of a musician :)

… of the Corona Situation, my new Jazz trio project “Christian Schmid’s Kaleidoscope” gets delayed, but at least there is some time for practicing. Here’s the intro to one of the songs we are going to play live, hopefully soon.

Download brass quartet sheet music: O Tannenbaum.

Here’s what it sounds like when played on a piano:

The Story Behind

A last-minute arrangement. No big words needed. By the way here’s a Christmas tree that I made out of peanut shells, rather unconsciously, during a telco at work.

Merry Christmas everyone!

This Thursday there was a Jazz Jam Session very close to where I live. I got home from work at around 7:30 pm. I had a choice of stressing myself, showering and going there right away or taking some time and skipping part of the opening concert. I did the latter and decided to use the time to do a quick lead sheet for the Austrian Christmas Carol “Es wird scho glei dumpa”. I had done a reharmonization of the tune earlier, but in order to be able to allow for solos it was necessary to write a lead sheet.

I still was able to hear 2 pieces of the opening band, and later we had quite some fun playing and improvising over my AABA lead sheet version of “Es wird scho glei dumpa”.

Here’s the complete download including the musescore files of both the reharmonization, the lead sheet, pdfs and much more.

Download brass quartet sheet music: Carol of the Bells.

Please note that “Carol of The Bells” is also part of the compilation Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 & 2.

Here’s what it sounds like when played on a piano:

The Story Behind

Watching “Home Alone” (either 1 or 2, but never both) around Christmas has become a tradition. One of the Christmas songs featured in Home Alone 1 is “Carol of the Bells”.

Here’s why I decided to pick it up next:

• It’s a tune from a completely different universe, in a sense that it would rarely be sung or played here in Austria. Also, you would not be able to hear it on the radio (no “Last Christmas” status).
• Still, through “Home Alone” it has found its way into my personal Christmas tradition. Its sound and repetitive ostinato are inevitably linked to Christmas.

As for the arrangement: It starts with a bare-bones version of the tune. As the song was composed by Mykola Leontovych in 1914, it already has a fairly modern feel to it. The repetitive ostinato and the variations with a gradual ascending energy level make the song quite different from the Christmas Carols that I did so far.

With that, I also had to take a different approach for the reharmonization. Harmonics alone would not be enough. – At least not given the four-voice limitation and the need for the ostinato as a continuous reference. Soon I landed on a 7/4 time signature variation of the ostinato as a new anchor. Actually, new harmonies are only introduced from bar 43 onwards. With bar 47 onward offering a new take on the melody, the harmony, and the rhythm. Bar 51 has a Latin feel to it.

In terms of voicings, the idea was to increase the spread, and thus the richness of the cord, towards what I perceive as the climax in bar 55 and to decrease the spread again afterward. The 5/4 bar makes bars 55-58 feel more natural to me, as this can also be heard as barline-defying melody that still fits into two 7/4 bars. After dealing with the nice melody in the 5th mode of the melodic minor scale, the final 3/4 time signature guides back to the original “Dal segno”.