Hear Ye Newes Today: Six Traditional Carols for Christmas by Brian Joyce String Quartet - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.836707

"What’s Christmas without a few toys?"

Here is a new suite of older carols for string quartet in which each musician is required to play a wee bit of percussion in addition to his or her "real" instrument. The potential for entertaining visual theater is nearly as high as the potential for mishap. (If all goes according to plan, nothing should actually go airborne.)

This is something of a sequel to my earlier Christmas quartet And Therefore Be Merry, which has never been out of print since it was first published over twenty years ago. But where that work was a continuous medley, this is a set of independent and more fully developed movements, each able to stand on its own.

As mentioned above, each member of the quartet is responsible for a small item of percussion. These are all things which could readily be found in a local school band room: a triangle, a tambourine, a suspended cymbal - played with a soft (yarn) stick - and a small frame drum, played with the bare hand.

These are all earlier, earthier carols than what one typically finds on the radio or playing over the speakers at the mall. They include Gloucestershire Wassail, Riu Riu Chiu, Angelus ad Virginem, The Sans Day Carol, The Wexford Carol, and Masters in This Hall. Being perhaps less familiar, they bring a welcome respite from the overworked seasonal fare we all hear a bit too much of each year. They speak of simpler times, and of a far less frantic approach to Christmas. These fresh and inventive arrangements will make a useful addition to a quartet’s repertoire, provided the players have the requisite spirit of adventure.

Score and Parts total 67 pages. Performance time is about 14 minutes.