Bonus 2 - Christmas Bells

This is the third time I’ve composed one of these pieces on Christmas Day. The first year I did this was 2012. That year I composed a piece I imagined being played by carillon or a handbell choir:

I actually composed two differently orchestrated versions of this but since they’re both fundamentally the same this will suffice to give you an idea.

I actually arranged this for handbells. A friend submitted it to their church’s handbell choir where the musical director proceeded to knee-jerk reject it at a glance because “the bass part was too simple.” I guess he received so much original handbell music he could afford to be picky. Needless to say I never offered them another one. There is also a version of this piece for mandolin orchestra retitled “The Engulfed Handbells” as part of my set of character pieces “21 Moments of Zen.”

When I revisited Christmas last year I decided to keep working along the same lines, with bells, so that Tuna Day became a handbell duet with the imaginative title:

This has never been revamped for other instruments, though I do think it would be fun to hear it performed by handbells.

Technically, the piece I posted today was actually composed two days ago, when we were, literally, freezing our ass’s off from the arctic blast noted in yesterdays tune. I wasn’t paying attention at the time I composed it it would be the piece that appears on my blog on Christmas Day, so decided these two pieces would be a nice bonus.

In a couple of days you’ll see the piece that I actually compose on Christmas - It'll almost certainly feature bells in some way as I’m a creature of habit.