Christmas sheet music

Which Christmas music is actually free

The melodies and words of the traditional carols are long out of copyright — Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, In the Bleak Midwinter, the lot. So are the standard Victorian hymnal harmonisations, which is why the same four-part settings appear in every free collection.

What is not free is a modern arrangement of any of them. An arranger who sets Silent Night for upper voices and harp in 2015 owns that setting, even though the tune is public domain. This is the single most misunderstood point in Christmas music publishing, and it is why a carol you can find free in one listing costs money in the next: you are not buying the carol, you are buying somebody's version of it.

The mid-century popular songs are a different matter entirely. White Christmas, Rudolph, The Christmas Song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and their contemporaries are all under copyright, and anything offering them free is almost certainly infringing.

Choose the voicing before the arrangement

Christmas choral music is published in more voicings than any other repertoire, because it has to serve everything from a cathedral choir to a primary school. SATB is standard four-part; SAB drops to three for choirs short of men; SSA and SA are upper voices; unison with descant is what most congregational carol services actually use.

A descant is a separate high line sung over the final verse while everyone else keeps the tune. Buying an SATB arrangement when you wanted the familiar hymnal harmony plus a descant is a common and irritating mistake, because the SATB version usually rewrites the harmony you were expecting.

Keys, and why the carol sounds wrong

Carols are published in different keys by different houses, and congregations know them in the key their own hymnal uses. If you are accompanying singing rather than performing, match the key of the book in the pews rather than buying whatever is cheapest — a carol a tone higher than expected is noticeably harder to sing.

For solo instruments, check whether an edition is a straight melody-and-chords lead sheet, a full piano arrangement, or a part in a transposing key. Wind and brass collections are frequently published in parallel B♭, E♭ and C editions so an ensemble can play together.