Mozart's Sleigh Ride

Here's another awesome classical music piece that you can introduce to your students. And this one fits perfectly into a holiday concert setting, because it features handbells, jingle bells, and sleigh bells. The work comes from Mozart's "Three German Dances," which were written in 1791, while Mozart lived in Vienna and served as the Imperial Chamber Composer for Emperor Joseph II. The dance we are featuring here is the third in the set and is subtitled, "Sleigh Ride." Our adaptation is in the original key of C Major (which makes it a natural for kids' handbells), but at a slightly slower tempo. There are many wonderful recordings of this piece available if you want to hear exactly how it was intended to sound.

We did this arrangement to feature handbells, jingle bells, and sleigh bells. You could add in or substitute other instruments if you wish. Certainly other "jingly" sounding instruments would work well for the jingle/sleigh bell parts – tambourines, triangles, finger cymbals, etc. You really can put together any combination of things you want, but it would be most effective to have two groups so that you get the "back and forth" sound of the two parts. In a performance, consider putting your handbell players in the middle, with your two jingle groups on either side. Your handbell players will need to be ready to play in bar 1. To help them come in on time, there are two bars of cymbal taps before bar 1 to help set the tempo.

To make it easier for your young players, we have included PDFs of isolated handbell and jingle bell/sleigh bell parts on our web site. Also, note that the accompaniment track for this tune includes the jingle bells and sleigh bells. We did this so that it sounds very much like Mozart's original orchestration. There are also guide bells for the handbell part on the accompaniment. However, if you would like a track that does not have any jingle bells or sleigh bells or guide bells on it, we are including a completely bell-free MP3 track on our web site.