composition / percussion ensemble / god rest ye merry, gentlemen

god rest ye merry, gentlemen

Medium: Marimba Quartet
Publisher: C. Alan Publications
Composed: 2005
Duration: 4:00
Difficulty: Grade IV

Instrumentation:
4 Marimbas (playable on one 5-octave instrument and one 4.3-octave instrument)
All 2-mallet parts

look inside

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Score

listen

notes

Variations on the holiday classic "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" for marimba quartet.

review (excerpt)

Scored for marimba quartet, Nathan Daughtrey's arrangement of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is truly creative in the manner that he frames the traditional melody, making it appropriate not only for a sacred setting but for percussion ensemble programming any time of the year, in any performance forum.

Careful directions regarding mallet selection permit performers to balance and articulate their parts throughout this 85-measure arrangement. After a rhapsodic 16-measure introduction, Daughtrey takes the listener through an imitative variation - starting with the bass marimbist. This transitions to a completely different style, with the lower two parts energizing a tight-canonic section in the upper two parts, before the arrangement ends with a sounding chorale at a very soft dynamic level.

Overall, this is an outstanding arrangement for an intermediate to advanced high school marimba quartet or for a solid college marimba quartet.

Jim Lambert, Percussive Notes (February 2006)