Looking for something a bit unusual for your Christmas handbell performance or worship service? Here’s our latest eight-bell arrangement! It’s a sixteenth-century Flemish carol called De Drie Koningen(The Three Kings). This carol is suitable either for Epiphany or Christmas. We recorded the video last January, before we took down our Christmas tree!
“De Drie Koningen” – recorded in front of our Christmas tree!
Would you like to play this 8-bell piece?
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
If you’re new to buying our music online, we strongly recommend that you read the licensing agreement first. Please note in particular that music from Choraegus is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you’re new to Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this to help you navigate the purchasing process in a stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please look at our Frequently-Asked Questions for more assistance. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Gaudete! (meaning “Rejoice!”) is a sacred Christmas carol, first published in 1581 in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Finnish/Swedish sacred songs. Choraegus is pleased to present this new Level 4+ arrangement by Larry Sue.
The piece is for 3-8 octaves of handbells, with optional handchimes. It’s a lively arrangement that we hope your handbell choir will have fun playing! A cajón accompaniment is also available.
Where to get the music for Gaudete!
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus. For just $25 (plus $5 for the cajón part), you can print up to 15 copies, so you only need to pay once for your whole choir. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you’re buying music from Choraegus for the first time, please read the Licensing Agreement before you make your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help make the purchase and download process stress-free!
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer; no more waiting for music to arrive in the mail!
Any questions?
If you have any questions, you’re always welcome to contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
We’re coming to the end of our exciting holiday season of Christmas handbell performances. This was our busiest season yet, and we’d like to thank everyone who helped to make the last few weeks so much fun!
Our Christmas started early this year, with a Holiday Open House event. We enjoyed playing handbell duets at Ditto Upscale Resale, here in Holland. It was a great way to welcome the season. It was also good to check that we still had the stamina to play for three hours at a time without collapsing. It’s a useful skill when we play our duets at the Salvation Army Red Kettle!
Christmas handbell duets at the Ditto Upscale Resale Holiday Open House
We continued our season with performances at several church events. These included a Christmas By Candlelight event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and our first visit to Cultivate Community Church in Hamilton.
We’ve very much enjoyed being part of the arts community here in Holland. It’s been fun to share our music at community events such as the Kerstmarkt. This is an annual European-style Christmas market in downtown Holland. When Carla lived in England, a highlight of Christmas was being able to visit traditional markets in London, Bath and Lincoln. Even though the market here in Holland is on a much smaller scale, the atmosphere is the same. The chilly weather also makes it extra festive! Our bells survived the cold, and we managed to play for several hours on a Saturday morning and Friday evening. Here’s a video of one of the pieces we played there:
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available from Choraegus!
Back to the Van Andel Institute
This year we played Christmas music for residents and their guests at several senior living communities and care home Christmas parties. It’s always fun to share our Christmas music with appreciative audiences of all ages. We were excited to make another visit to the Van Andel Institute, to welcome guests to their employees’ holiday party. The Van Andel Institute definitely gets the prize for the most-impressive Christmas tree!
Larry at the 2018 Van Andel Institute Employees’ Holiday Party
We were happy to continue our collaboration with the Zeeland Community Band, joining with them for their popular annual Christmas concert.
The Zeeland Community Band, directed by Rose Wiersma – Christmas Concert Carla at the Zeeland Community Band Christmas Concert
Special thanks go to:
Ditto Upscale Resale, Holland, MI The Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland, MI Friendship Christian Reformed Church, Byron Center, MI Century Club of Holland, MI Hope College Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP) P.E.O. Sisterhood of Holland, MI Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo, MI Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, MI First Presbyterian Church of Holland, MI Cultivate Community Church, Hamilton, MI D&W Fresh Market, Holland, MI The Salvation Army of Holland, MI The Village of Heather Hills, Grand Rapids, MI Zeeland Community Band Freedom Village of Holland, MI Resthaven Care Center, Holland, MI Friends of the Gary Byker Library, Hudsonville, MI Resthaven Maple Woods, Holland, MI Grandville Ladies’ Literary Club, Grandville, MI Kentwood Women’s Club, Kentwood, MI Third Reformed Church of Holland, MI
Thanks to everyone who helped to make this such an exciting holiday season for us. If you’d like to book us for your event in the coming year, please let us know!
Christmas by Candlelight at Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo
Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright Round yon virgin mother and child. Holy infant, so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in heavenly peace.
After more than six years of arranging and performing eight-bell Christmas music, we finally managed to publish an arrangement of the popular Austrian carol Silent Night.
We recorded our video at the Kerstmarkt. This is a European-style Christmas market that takes place annually in downtown Holland, Michigan. It was a cold, breezy and rainy Saturday morning, but it’s still one of our favorite events of the holiday season.
Would you like to play this arrangement?
If you’re still looking for Christmas music for handbells, Silent Night is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. For Christmas 2018, you can get it for the special price of just $3, with permission to print up to 4 copies for your group.
If you haven’t bought music from us before, please read the licensing agreement before making your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide to buying music from Choraegus. As with all our music for handbells, Silent Night comes to you as a digital download. You’ll be responsible for printing the music yourself, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music for handbells, Silent Night in particular, or anything else on our website, please ask! You can look at our Frequently-Asked Questions, but if you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
We were honored to be invited to present the 21st Annual Rietberg Concert at Third Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. This annual concert is a tribute to the 45 years of service of Roger and Evelyn Rietberg to the music program of Third Reformed Church. This year’s concert was given in memory of Evelyn Rietberg, who changed the lives of so many children at the church.
Normally at this time of year, we’d have started rehearsing our Christmas music. However, this year we had two fall concert performances. That gave us a good reason to postpone practising most of the Christmas music and focus on other music instead. We did include just a handful of Christmas pieces in the repertoire, because handbells and Christmas go together so well. After all, Christmas is only a few weeks away!
Here’s the concert program:
Handbells, organ and flute together!
We’re grateful to Linda Strouf and Mary Van Voorst for sharing their musical talents with us at this concert. We’d made plans to play our duet arrangement of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee with organ accompaniment. That created a small challenge, because the organ at Third Reformed is located at the rear of the sanctuary, upstairs in the balcony. Before the concert, we set up duplicate bells in the balcony. When the time came, Linda played a J.S. Bach piece to give us time to get from the front of the church, up the stairs and onto the balcony, ready to play Joyful, Joyful. The plan worked perfectly! Linda played another organ piece while we made our way back down the stairs, and to the front of the church again.
A highlight of the concert, for us, was the opportunity to play our arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High, complete with piano and flute accompaniment. This was only the third time the piece has been performed, and the flute accompaniment part is so new that we haven’t published it yet! Mary Van Voorst joined us to play the flute, and Linda made her way down from the balcony to play the piano part. We also enjoyed playing a couple of recent additions to our repertoire – Go, Tell It on the Mountain and Lucerna Laudoniae. Lucerna is one of our early arrangements that we brought back after not having played it for several years!
Roger Rietberg was at the concert!
We were surprised and pleased to be introduced to Roger Rietberg, who attended the concert with his son. Afterwards, we enjoyed a reception, where we had the opportunity to chat with members of the audience. It’s always fun to talk about our bells and music! Al and Jane Osman gave us flowers (look out for Osman’s Flowers and Firs at the Downtown Holland Farmers’ Market). These were perfect for a festive-looking photo with our bells!
Thank you!
Our thanks go to everyone who helped to make this concert possible – from planning the event, all the way to staying to clean up after the reception.
The summer is ending (at least here in Michigan, anyway) and autumn is in the air. It’s the time of year when we start thinking about Christmas and holiday music – and we’re excited to be able to present some new eight-bell titles for this year!
This Advent hymn made it into our concert repertoire this year. We didn’t want to wait for Advent, so we performed it for the first time at the opening concert for the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 spring festival on Mackinac Island. This hymn was originally written somewhere between the 7th and 9th centuries, and it works really well on handbells!
This melody first appeared in France in the 12th century, and was a very late addition to our Christmas performance repertoire last year; so late that we only had the opportunity to perform it once – at the Kerstmarkt (European-style Christmas market) in Downtown Holland. We’re looking forward to playing it more this holiday season!
If you’re looking for an unusual Christmas carol, this is a good one. It’s from Cornwall, England, from way back in Medieval times. It’s not difficult to play, and could also work well as a quartet piece.
Since we moved to Holland, Michigan, we’ve been having fun finding traditional Dutch melodies that can be played using just eight bells. This is a children’s carol that’s also sung in Belgium. It’s not difficult to play, and would also be particularly suitable for a quartet.
This is a cheery traditional Dutch Christmas song that’s been sung by many generations of children in The Netherlands. We found it during our search for Dutch music after moving from California to Holland!
This French carol was first published in 1720. It’s about the birth of Jesus, and the shepherds celebrating by playing flutes and drums. We don’t play either of those instruments, so here’s our handbell version:
This traditional German carol was unknown to us until we heard it for the first time in church last year. Our version for eight handbells is great for practising dynamics!
This Italian carol, Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle, is fast becoming one of our favorite carols to play!
This year’s eight-bell Christmas music definitely seems to have quite an international flavour. Remember to check out the other Christmas and holiday titles for eight bells on our music site. There are also some 12-bell Christmas pieces and some new titles for full handbell choir too. We hope you’ll find something you’ll enjoy playing!
It was an honor for us to be invited to be guest artists at the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 Spring Festival on Mackinac Island. We were excited to go back to the island! We’d only visited a couple of times before – in 2010 and 2013 – and hadn’t stayed for more than a few hours.
No cars on Mackinac Island!
One of the unusual things about Mackinac Island is you can’t drive your car there! Motorised vehicles have been banned since 1898. For this reason, our journey there began by parking our car in Mackinac City and taking the ferry across to the island.
Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island – seen from the ferry!
Being West Michigan’s smallest handbell choir has its advantages. We didn’t need to transport tables, foam pads and multiple cases of bells over to the island. We had just one handcart loaded with our equipment, and we pushed it all the way from the ferry dock, up the hill to Grand Hotel.
On our way to Grand Hotel for the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 Festival!
We arrived at Grand Hotel on Thursday morning and the staff instantly made us welcome. The hotel hadn’t officially opened for the 2018 season yet. We were fortunate to be able to stay there and enjoy the very special and unique atmosphere. We were also able to observe some of the preparations as the hotel staff prepared for the first guests of the season to arrive. The hotel has 393 guest rooms, and each one is decorated in its own individual style. If you like flowers (particularly geraniums), you’d love Grand Hotel!
Our room at Grand Hotel!
A handchime workshop at the school
Thursday afternoon’s adventure involved some handbell education! We went to Mackinac Island Public School, where a group of us presented a program of music on handbells, flute and keyboard. The event was coordinated by Martha Matthews, with Gary Matthews playing keyboard. Members of the Area 5 Board were also there, to supervise the students with the sets of chimes.
The students were each given a color-coded handchime to play. They were able to play chords to accompany “Amazing Grace” and “Jingle Bells”, with the aid of a chart showing coloured dots. It was wonderful to see the enthusiasm of the students as they played. For most of them, it was their first opportunity to play these instruments. They did very well, learning how to use the correct techniques for playing the chimes and stopping the sound afterwards.
We demonstrated several of our handbell duets for the students. Martha and Gary joined us to perform Silver and Bronze(for handbells and flute) and Ding Dong, Merrily on High(for handbells and piano, with additional soon-to-be-published flute part).
Performing for the students at Mackinac Island Public School
The festival begins!
Friday marked the start of the festival, and we enjoyed a wonderful evening meal at the hotel before performing the opening concert in the beautiful theatre there.
Here’s the list of pieces we played at the opening concert!
Performing a concert for an audience of “handbell people” can be an intimidating experience. There’s definitely some additional pressure involved when performing in front of people who know about handbell stuff! However, handbell people are, in general, a friendly and supportive group. We felt much more relaxed than we’d expected to during our concert. Afterwards, we were pleased to receive some really nice comments from audience members.
Teaching about 8-bell music
On Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to teach a class on 8-bell music. We were pleasantly surprised by how many people arrived for the class! We answered questions about our music, specific techniques involved in playing it, and how to buy our sheet music online. Participants enjoyed played some simple pieces such as Aura Lee, Kingsfold and The Water is Wide. Finally, they tried the more challenging I Saw Three Ships.
Our eight-bell music workshop at Grand Hotel. Did we mention the weekend involved lots of coffee?
Other classes at the festival
During the festival, participants had the chance to attend other interesting classes, such as Artistry and the Big Box of Crayons: Techniques for a Variety of Tone Color and Handbells: a Full-Body Sport, both led by Martha Matthews, Maori Sticks, led by Susan Oxley, Music Theory, led by Ann Wood, and Finale and Handbells, led by Judy Phillips. There was also FredChat – an opportunity to chat with guest conductor Fred Gramann. We enjoyed a fascinating tour of Grand Hotel, where we were able to find out more about the building and its history. We even saw “behind the scenes” in the impressive kitchen!
The closing concert
Throughout the weekend, rehearsals continued in the Grand Hotel Theatre, as the festival participants prepared five pieces, ready to perform at the closing concert. The massed ringing pieces were Acclamation in G Minor (Karen Thompson), Within the Darkest Night (Derek Hakes), Hosanna (Jason Krug), What Child is This (Brenda Austin) and Jubilation (Fred Gramann). Fred Gramann conducted the festival choirs during rehearsals and at the closing concert.
Festival choirs rehearse under the baton of Fred Gramann
Fred Gramann at the closing concert at the 2018 Area 5 Spring Festival
The closing concert was well attended, with audience members coming from Grand Hotel and the island. Afterwards we spoke to several people who had never heard handbells before, and wanted to hear more!
Leaving the island
We’d have liked to stay longer on the island, but we were playing duets in a worship service in Harbor Springs the following morning. We’d made plans to travel back on the 6:00pm ferry to Mackinac City. Before we left, though, we had time to walk for a while and admire the scenery. We followed a trail of steps, thinking it would lead to a beach. Maybe it would have done, but before we reached the bottom of the steps, the ground was covered in a thick (and sloping) layer of ice. It seemed that winter was as reluctant to leave the island as we were!
Enjoying a walk on the island after the festival
Handbells and equipment leaving the island
It was fun to see the handbell equipment at the Shepler’s ferry dock. Transporting bells, chimes and foam pads is an interesting challenge on an island that doesn’t allow cars. All the equipment had to come to and from the hotel on horse-drawn transport, and it was transferred onto luggage carts to be loaded onto the ferry. Our own equipment was much more manageable, and we were able to wheel our handcart onto the ferry ourselves.
Handbells and foam pads ready to go onto the ferry. Our own equipment is in the foreground.
Thanks to all at HMA Area 5
We had an amazing time at the Area 5 Spring Festival on Mackinac Island. Grand Hotel is a dream location for any conference or vacation. It’s a fascinating place, full of history, with people who go out of their way to make guests feel cared about. Our thanks go to the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 for inviting us to be guest artists at this event. We appreciated the opportunity to stay at Grand Hotel and share our music with other handbell musicians and students on the island. We hope to go back there again someday!
Here are two newly-available arrangements for 12 bells and piano accompaniment. Larry arranged these pieces for a UK group led by Meg Hostler of Finchampstead Handbell Ringers. Their debut performances were in England on Christmas Eve 2015.
The arrangements are less challenging than our other 12-bell pieces. Larry arranged them to be easy for a small group to learn and perform with minimal rehearsal time!
Both these demo recordings were made during an all-too-brief “Christmas in February” rehearsal session when we got together with Meg for an Inspiration International reunion during our most recent visit to England in February 2016. The first piece is In the Bleak Midwinter:
The second is the Austrian carol Still, Still, Still:
The piano accompaniment score for Still, Still, Still is the same as the accompaniment that goes with the solo version of this carol.
Would you like to play these pieces?
If you’d like to play either (or both!) of these pieces for 12 bells and piano, the sheet music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded and printed at home. You’ll be responsible for printing your own scores, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. If you’re new to buying our music, please look at the step-by-step guide. We designed this to help make the process stress-free!
Please read our licensing agreement before making your purchase, and read our guide to how many copies your purchase allows you to print. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, please check our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you’re looking for, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
As all handbell musicians know, it’s important to start preparing for the holiday season long before it begins. Here’s some new 8-bell music for Christmas!
This is possibly our favorite of this year’s new eight-bell Christmas music. It’s an Italian carol. If you’re a fan of sixteenth notes (semiquavers), you’ll enjoy playing this one!
Also known as “On Christmas Night All Christians Sing”, this traditional English carol has an optional repeat section, and is a lot of fun to play. We recorded the video as part of our “A Carol A Day” project for December 2016.
This arrangement is a fun one, mostly straightforward, but with a little triplet challenge in the middle! We recorded this video in December 2016, as part of our “A Carol A Day” project.
Also known as “Here We Come A-Wassailing”, this is another traditional carol from England, which we recorded as part of our A Carol A Day project last December.
This is an arrangement based on the “Winchester Old” tune, commonly used in the United Kingdom. It’s rhythmically straightforward to play, and could be a good choice for a quartet.
These new pieces, together with our other Christmas music for 8 bells, are available from Choraegus. We hope you’ll enjoy them!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music. If you have any questions, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
We’re starting 2017 with a new arrangement for eight handbells. This is the German hymn O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright.
“O Morning Star, how fair and bright thou beamest forth in truth and light, O Sovereign meek and lowly! Thou Root of Jesse, David’s Son, my Lord and Master, thou hast won my heart to serve thee solely! Thou art holy, fair and glorious, rich in blessing, rule and might o’er all possessing.”
Over the years, this hymn has been popular for weddings and funerals in Germany. However, in the USA it’s now more often sang at Epiphany.
More information about this arrangement
This arrangement isn’t too challenging to play, and would be also be very suitable as a quartet piece. If you’d like to play it, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
When you purchase music from Choraegus, it will come to you as a PDF file. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Your purchase of this 8-bell arrangement entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your handbell choir.
If you haven’t bought music from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide to take you through the purchase process in a stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, you might like to look at our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you seek, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
