Rahther Jolly Olde St. Nicholas

Just when you think you've heard every possible version of this classic American Christmas tune, our friend M. C. Handel concocts a new arrangement that allows your beginning recorder players to sing and play with the accompaniment of a delightful orchestra of strings, brass and percussion.

The Mozart-like strings set up a pattern that lets your players play fairly slowly without noticing that the song is slower than normal.

As you will hear on the recording, the arrangement includes three times through the song. It is designed so that the first verse is played on recorder and the second verse is sung. For the third verse it gets a little bit sillier. This is the verse where the lyrics describe what each child wants for Christmas. For the recording, we picked names of the kids performing, and suggest that you do the same, possibly rotating the names used each time you perform it. (Good luck figuring out which names to use in the concert! Maybe you could draw them from a hat or use the name usage as a reward for performance or deportment.)

You will note that during this verse, the line will start, Justin wants a... followed by a ___________ under the next phrase. These notes are played on the recorder. The tune ends with a little extension of the song that also features a sung line followed by a final recorder answer.