O du Fröhliche

What you get, immediately after purchase
📄 The sheet music as a PDF, printable and readable on a tablet
🎧 The MP3 audio recording, to learn the piece by ear
✉️ A download link by email, with no account to create

This score is 2 pages long.

📚 Save with the Accordion Collection - 40 Sheet Music Pieces

🎧 Listen to the demo:

"O du fröhliche" is a German Christmas carol whose words were written in Weimar in 1816 by Johannes Daniel Falk, for the orphans he had taken in after the Napoleonic Wars. He set them to a Sicilian melody, the Marian hymn "O sanctissima", which Johann Gottfried Herder had brought back from Italy. The original song celebrated the three great feasts of the year, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost; in 1826 Heinrich Holzschuher rewrote the last two verses and turned it into a carol devoted entirely to Christmas. It has become one of the best-loved carols in the German-speaking world, where it traditionally closes the Christmas Eve service, and its melody is also known in English as "O Sanctissima". Built from broad phrases that move step by step, with a refrain that rises in a single sweep, it sings naturally on the accordion. One to play at the end of the evening, when the whole family joins in the refrain.