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Piano sheet music for kids · Carol · Level 3: Notes below middle C
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 3/4, 16 bars and a pickup. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The West Country carol in waltz time, arranged in C major so there are no black keys. It starts on a pickup, “We”, before the first bar line, and each “wish you a mer-ry” is a crotchet and four quavers. The thumb sits on the G below middle C and the hand covers G to D; it moves up for E in bar 3, and for E and F in bar 5, the third “wish you a mer-ry Christ-mas”. In bar 14 the tune leaps up to the G above middle C for “Christ-” and drops a whole octave for “-mas”. The left hand plays a waltz bass in C, F, D minor, G, G7 and A minor.
Practice tip: Learn bar 1 well: bar 3 is the same shape a step higher, and bar 5 a step higher again. Practise the octave jump in bar 14 with finger 5 landing on the G above middle C and the thumb back on the G below.
The words
We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Good tidings we bring to you and your kin; good tidings for Christmas and a happy New Year!
A short history
We Wish You a Merry Christmas comes from the West Country of England, and is a wassailing song: carollers went from door to door singing for food and drink, which is why the second verse demands “figgy pudding” and refuses to go until it gets some. Nobody knows who wrote it or exactly when; it is usually said to date from the 16th century, but it was not written down until much later.
It became famous through the Bristol composer and organist Arthur Warrell, who arranged it for his University of Bristol Madrigal Singers and published the arrangement with Oxford University Press in 1935. Warrell’s version is the one choirs still sing, and it spread the carol around the English-speaking world.
“Good tidings” just means good news, the same phrase the angel uses in the Christmas story.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Traditional (English, West Country)
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 3/4
- Length
- 16 bars and a pickup
- Tempo
- Brightly, crotchet = 126
- Difficulty
- Level 3: Notes below middle C (piece 61 of 201)
- Type
- Carol
- Hands
- Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left
- Copyright
- Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use
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