Orchestral Arrangements of Christmas Carols

[JeanM]

There is a group of 7 of us who formed a Christmas music group this year (4 mandolins, 2 mandolas and 1 guitar). We didn't get started until early October and one of our members was gone for 3 weeks in late November/early December. We did learn 19 tunes (about 40 minutes of music) and were able to perform 4 times. Everyone in the group was very enthusiastic about this endeavor and I believe we will continue this next year. However, it would be nice to find some nice orchestral arrangements of more Christmas carols. We have a few and they turned out great. For some of our tunes, we just used the SATB choral arrangements -- not as interesting as we'd like, but these did work fine for "sing-alongs". If anyone knows of some mandolin orchestra arrangements, please let me know where I could find these.

[John Goodin]

Trekel in Germany is the largest dealer that I know about for mandolin orchestra (zupforchester) music. Here's a link to what I think is their selection of Christmas mando orchestra pieces.

There are also lots of good collections of Christmas music arranged for recorders that could be easily adapted to the instrumentation of your group. Both Courtly Music and the Boulder Early Music Shop are good sources.

There are also lots of string quartet arrangements you could try if you can talk your guitarist into reading the cello parts.

Finally, if you are in Minnesota as it appears, you could contact the folks in the Minnesota Mandolin Orchestra and see if they have any arrangements to share. They are all great people and might even talk you into joining the group.

John G.

[JeanM]

I hadn't thought of looking for Recorder arrangements. Both the Courtly Music and the Boulder Early Music Shop sites have a good selection. I'll definitely order a couple of these and try them out.

The Trekel site is in German so its a little harder for me to figure out. There may be something there that will work also.

Thanks for your help, John.