Merry Christmas (In The Bleak Midwinter)

[Forest Dweller]

First of all, so sorry....little did I know when I started working on this at the start of December how popular this tune would be this year. And I apologise for posting yet another version of it. In my defence it is a timeless melody by one of the World's great composers (Gustav Holst). It is also one of the most enigmatically beautiful of all Christmas carols.

I penned most of this back in 2011 and since getting back into Dadgad with my beautiful Huss & Dalton I decided to dust off some of my Carol arrangements. There have been several wonderful arrangements of this posted here so I thought I would try and develop my arrangement a little more. Once I had an introduction (with its slightly exotic modal melody) I then went about tweaking quite a sizeable portion of the original arrangement- changing harmonies and bass notes mainly. But then I had the dilemma of how to end it, especially when I composed the brand new lower octave and natural harmonic 4th verse. The end went through various revisions until I settled on this unusual ending with material that is basically 3 bars of entirely new stuff! However, to me it just seemed to work- I don't know why!

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow and that you folks in the USA aren't affected too much by the horrendous weather conditions. I will be thinking of you all,

Robbie

[Stevien]

Well done!! Excellent version! And a Merry Christmas to all!
Steve

[ReneAsologuitar]

Enjoying the wonderful guitar playing, truly lovely.
Also enjoying the video as well.
We are just thawing out today, from the very white 3 days here in the PacNorWest.
Merry Christmas!!!
With love and respect,
Rene

[Honkycat]

This is a really lovely arrangement, good job!

[MikeMcKee]

Nice Robbie. Always enjoy your arrangements. Merry Christmas...

[Forest Dweller]

Thank you all so much for listening. Hope you had a relaxing Christmas day

[rémy64]

Very nice interprétation Robbie