God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
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.
Medium: Marimba Quartet
Publisher: C. Alan Publications
Composed: 2005
Duration: 4:00
Difficulty: Grade 4
Instrumentation
Marimba 1 (4-octave)
Marimba 2 (4-octave)
Marimba 3 (4.3-octave)
Marimba 4 (5-octave)
*Playable on one 4.3-octave Marimba and one 5-octave Marimba
Program Notes
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.
