I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

I must admit that I was far more familiar with the 1956 setting of this poem as sung by Bing Crosby to music by Johnny Marks than I was to the one found in many hymnals. It was on several of the Christmas albums that would be played on the phonograph in our house during the holiday season. However, I chose to arrange the carol setting for this collection as it resonated more deeply with me and seemed to better capture the essence of the poem by Longfellow. He wrote it during the Civil War, on Christmas Day of 1863, and several of the verses make reference to the war. While I did not set any of the Civil War verses, there is an almost martial quality to the opening music and one can almost hear the brass choir ringing out in the first verse. With each subsequent verse, the rhythm of the right hand becomes quicker, moving from half notes to quarter note triplets to eighth notes and finally to eighth note triplets in the final verse. For the most part, the left hand maintains the steady beat of quarter notes, with the exception of the final verse where it begins to move in eighth notes setting up a two-against-three pattern between the hands. It is the most jubilant of the verses and feels like an explosion of sound as the bells ring out across all the land proclaiming "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."