Joy To The World – Organ

Description

Hamlin’s seasonal Christmas offering includes O Holy Night and Joy to the World! The Lord Is Come (with the Hallelujah Chorus), and Noel, Noel, Noel, Tidings Now We Bring, a four-song medley featuring Masters in This Hall; God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; On Christmas Night All Christians Sing, and Once in Royal David’s City. This collection is a part of the Worship Hymns for Organ Series. Exciting, playable and well crafted!

O Holy Night, also known as Cantique de Noel, is a well-known Christmas carol originally based on a French-language poem by poet Placide Cappeau written in 1843. Composer Adolphe Adam set the first line of this poem to music in 1847. The carol reflects on the birth of Jesus as humanity’s redemption. The work goes through a variety of registrations, creating sounds that resemble the timbres of strings, oboe, tubular bells, and more. These detailed registration suggestions are listed separately for both traditional and MIDI registrations. The arrangement ends with an extended ritardando with three distinct registrations for the melody, resembling the sound of an oboe/clarinet, viola, and flute.

Joy to the World is obviously a very well-known carol and is actually the most-published Christmas hymn in North America. The melody is titled “Antioch”, attributed to Handel, and adapted by American composer Lowell Mason in 1848. Hamlin’s arrangement is to be played with joy and grandeur. It features rhythmic motives that can be found interspersed in between the famous melody. Speaking of which, the melody starts off as the highest voice in the beginning of the arrangement and then switches to the middle voice in the next section. The song then brings out a more majestic mood with the help of rhythmic diminution and switching to a half-time feel. Registration suggestions add an extra flair, especially in the middle of the arrangement.

Noel, Noel, Noel, Tidings Now We Bring, a four-song medley, starts off Masters in This Hall, a traditional Christmas Carol with words written around 1860 by the English poet and artist William Morris to an old French dance tune. But after only a couple measures, it soon jumps straight into a quietly excited arrangement (with a new registration suggestion) of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, a traditional English Carol that is also known as Tidings of Comfort and Joy and other various incipits. The medley then moves on to a triplet feel and 6/8 meter with an arrangement of On Christmas Night All Christians Sing, a traditional English Carol that is also commonly referred to as the Sussex Carol, as it was discovered and written down when it was heard being sung by a Harriet Verrall of Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, Sussex. Last but certainly not last, the work transitions into an arrangement of Once in Royal David’s City, a Christmas carol originally written as a poem by Cecil Frances Alexander and later set to music by English organist Henry John Gauntlett. This arrangement is the longest by far out of the four and is to be played with much emotion and renewed vigor. Registration suggestions are given for traditional registration as well as MIDI registration. Hamlin goes into extensive detail with these suggestions, paying lots of thorough attention to the crafting of each of these seven tones for traditional and MIDI registration.