🎄 Christmas songs on recorder: Silent Night, Jingle Bells and more, with the notes
Level: very easyTwinkle, Twinkle, Little StarAn 18th-century French tune (“Ah! vous dirai-je, maman”, published in 1761), the same one Mozart used for 12 piano variations.Level: very easyMary Had a Little LambA 19th-century American song: the poem is by Sarah Josepha Hale (1830) and the tune was adapted by Lowell Mason.Level: very easyFrère Jacques (Are You Sleeping?)A traditional French round, first published around 1780. Play it as a group: each person comes in two bars after the previous one.Level: very easyHot Cross BunsAn 18th-century English street cry sung by sellers of Easter buns. Today it is many people's very first song on recorder, flute and violin.Level: very easyLightly RowA 19th-century German folk song (“Hänschen klein”). It is one of the first pieces in the Suzuki violin method.Level: very easyAu Clair de la LuneA traditional French song from the 18th century. In 1860 it became the oldest known recording of a human voice.Level: very easyLondon Bridge Is Falling DownAn English nursery rhyme and singing game known since the 17th century, about the old London Bridge.Level: very easyOld MacDonald Had a FarmA traditional children's song with versions going back to the early 20th century, famous for its animal sounds.Level: very easyCanon in D (Pachelbel)The best-known line of Johann Pachelbel's Canon, written around 1700 and a wedding favourite.Level: very easyGood King WenceslasThe tune comes from a spring carol published in Finland in 1582 (Piae Cantiones); the Christmas words date from 1853.Level: easyOde to JoyThe theme from the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (1824), set to Schiller’s poem. Today it is the anthem of the European Union.Level: easyHappy BirthdayThe tune comes from “Good Morning to All”, published in 1893 by the sisters Mildred and Patty Hill in the United States.Level: easyJingle BellsWritten by the American James Lord Pierpont and published in 1857 as “One Horse Open Sleigh”. This is the chorus.Level: easyWhen the Saints Go Marching InAn African-American spiritual from the early 20th century that became a New Orleans jazz standard with Louis Armstrong’s 1938 recording.Level: easyRow, Row, Row Your BoatAn American nursery song published in 1852. It also works as a round, with each person coming in two bars later.Level: easyYankee DoodleA traditional American song from the 18th century, dating back to the Revolutionary War.Level: easySilent NightComposed by Franz Xaver Gruber to words by Joseph Mohr, and first sung in Austria on Christmas Eve 1818.Level: easyWe Wish You a Merry ChristmasA traditional English carol from the West Country, sung door to door since the 16th century.Level: easyAuld Lang SyneA traditional Scottish melody with words by Robert Burns (1788), sung at New Year all over the world.Level: easyLargo from the New World Symphony (Dvořák)The theme of the second movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”, written in the United States in 1893.Level: easyEine kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart)The opening of Serenade No. 13, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna in 1787.Level: easyAmazing GraceA hymn with words by John Newton (1779), sung to the American tune “New Britain” published in 1835. It is one of the most recorded songs in the world.Level: easyDeck the HallsA 16th-century Welsh melody (“Nos Galan”) with English Christmas words published in 1862.Level: easyKorobeiniki (Tetris Theme)A 19th-century Russian folk song based on a poem by Nikolai Nekrasov (1861), famous worldwide as the music of the video game Tetris.Level: intermediateMinuet in G (Bach)From the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach (1725). It was credited to J. S. Bach for centuries; today we know it is by Christian Petzold.Level: intermediateFür EliseBeethoven’s Bagatelle in A minor, written around 1810 and only published in 1867. This is the famous theme, simplified.Level: intermediateGreensleevesA traditional English tune from the 16th century. It was long credited to King Henry VIII, but there is no evidence for it.Level: intermediateIn the Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg)From Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt (1875), and heard in countless cartoons, films and games. Written here in F♯ minor so it fits every instrument.
→ Learn the recorder from scratch