One of my favorite holiday pieces is “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” by Savatage / Trans-Siberian Orchestra (1995). It is a combination of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played at the beginning of the song by a solo cello, and then in a round with a flute and guitar. The next part picks up the tempo and is the melody of “Carol of the Bells” or “Shchedryk”, the Ukrainian New Year’s song by Mykola Leontovych, written in 1916. I recently arranged this piece for my school’s Philharmonic, which consists of students in grades 4-8 who play strings, brass, woodwinds, and piano. They had a wonderful time learning to play and perform the song, and it inspired me to create this play-along video. For this video, I edited the song and slowed down the tempo so that it could be successfully performed by elementary and middle school students.

Musical Elements

The musical elements covered in the piece are the following:

• Triple meter (the introduction which is in cut time is used for the introduction to the play-along video)

• E Minor

• Eighth, quarter, half, and dotted half notes

• Quavers, crotchets, minims, and minims dotted

• Accent

• Fermata

• The music contains Christmas Carols, so it can only be used in a setting that allows the music.

The piece can be played with rhythm sticks, classroom percussion instruments, boomwhackers, tone chimes, handbells, or virtual instruments like playxylo set to G Major (which is the relative e minor).

Manipulatives

These slides are to be used in your classroom so you can teach or review the rhythm patterns. They are seen above, but can also be downloaded with this .zip file.

The slides contain:

• Title 1

• Title 2

• Credits

• Musical Elements covered in the play-along

• Quarter and four eighth notes pattern

• Two rhythm patterns played together

• The main motif of the quarter, two eighth notes, and the quarter note in the pitches of do ti-do la

• Melody and Harmony

• Motif 2 has the ascending bass line instead of the descending melody line (there are multiple slides for this)

• Dotted half note rhythms

• Quarter note rhythms

• Fermata and accent rhythms

There are a lot of different ways to teach these manipulatives, depending on where your students are in learning musical concepts. You could concentrate on the meter, or use this to prepare/present/practice dotted half notes, or teach about the various melodies and harmonies found throughout the song. WHatever you decide, I hope that you have fun with this play-along video.

Resources:

Savatage / Trans-Siberian Orchestra. (1995). Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24. On Dead Winter Dead and Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Paul O'Neill.