{"id":2645,"date":"2019-11-28T23:54:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T21:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2021-01-03T01:08:24","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T23:08:24","slug":"carol-of-the-bells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/?p=2645","title":{"rendered":"Carol of The Bells"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p> Download brass quartet sheet music: <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Carol-of-the-Bells.zip\">Carol of the Bells<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please note that &#8220;Carol of The Bells&#8221; is also part of the compilation <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/?p=2990\">Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 &amp; 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> Here&#8217;s what it sounds like when played on a piano:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Carol-of-the-Bells-Take-2019.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Story Behind<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Watching &#8220;Home Alone&#8221; (either 1 or 2, but never both) around Christmas has become a tradition. One of the Christmas songs featured in Home Alone 1 is &#8220;Carol of the Bells&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-1024x422.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-1024x422.png 1024w, https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-300x124.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-768x317.png 768w, https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-1536x634.png 1536w, https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-2048x845.png 2048w, https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Home-Alone-624x257.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s why I decided to pick it up next:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It&#8217;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 &#8220;Last Christmas&#8221; status).<\/li><li>Still, through &#8220;Home Alone&#8221; it has found its way into my personal Christmas tradition. Its sound and repetitive ostinato are inevitably linked to Christmas. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/?p=2569\">Christmas Carols that I did so far<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With that, I also had to take a different approach for the reharmonization. Harmonics alone would not be enough. &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 &#8220;Dal segno&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Download brass quartet sheet music: Carol of the Bells. Please note that &#8220;Carol of The Bells&#8221; is also part of the compilation Christmas Reharmonized, Volume 1 &amp; 2. Here&#8217;s what it sounds like when played on a piano: The Story Behind Watching &#8220;Home Alone&#8221; (either 1 or 2, but never both) around Christmas has become [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-2645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life_and_stuff","tag-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p15PpI-GF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2645"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3011,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions\/3011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chschmid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}