Carol of the Bells piano notes: letter names, key and melody

Carol of the Bells: questions people ask

What are the notes of "Carol of the Bells"?

The famous four-note figure is B♭ A B♭ G. It is played 16 times in a row from the start (bars 1 to 16), and 20 times in all. After it comes a second figure, D C D B♭, from bar 17. The whole tune uses 9 note names (B♭ A G D C F E♭ E F♯), which make 11 different pitches. Every note is on the printable sheet above.

What key and time signature is "Carol of the Bells" in?

In this setting it is in G minor (two flats) and in 3/4. Wikipedia says the music is in 3/4 with the B♭ bell pealing in 6/8, and calls it metrically bistable: a listener can focus on either meter. G minor is the number 11 key of 24 in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (4.3% of 1,462 songs) and number 10 in the Mutopia Project (3.3% of 1,974 pieces).

Is "Carol of the Bells" easy to play on the piano?

The first 16 bars are the same four notes, so the opening is simple to read and to play with one hand position. By this site's rule the whole tune is "Harder" (wider than a major sixth (17 semitones), wider than an octave, 4 notes outside the key signature and a leap of a minor sixth or more). The notes outside the key signature, E and F♯, first come in bar 25, and the highest note, G5, is in bar 21. This is one melody line; piano arrangements add a left hand and are separate works, which this page does not print.

What chords go with "Carol of the Bells"? What are the guitar chords?

This page prints no chord symbols, because a program that reads the chords from the four voices of the choir score gave labels that flip between G minor and G major inside the same bars, which is not musical. What can be said from the notes: the four-note figure B♭ A B♭ G is made of G and B♭, two notes of a G minor chord, with A passing between the B♭ notes, so the figure sits on G minor, the key of the piece. The chord symbols of an arrangement are part of that arrangement, so take them from a published one.

Who wrote "Carol of the Bells"?

The music is by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych (1877–1921). The conductor Oleksander Koshyts commissioned a song based on Ukrainian folk music, and the result, "Shchedryk", was first performed by students at Kyiv University in December 1916. It reached the United States in a Carnegie Hall concert on 5 October 1922. The English words were written in 1936 by Peter Wilhousky, who, Wikipedia says, secured copyright to his lyrics and the published song.

Is "Shchedryk" the same song?

The tune is the same: "Carol of the Bells" is based on "Shchedryk", a Ukrainian New Year song about a swallow flying into a house to announce a bountiful year. The Ukrainian words are on this page; the English words are a different text and are not printed here.

How was this tune checked?

It was read twice by programs: first from the LilyPond score in Wikipedia's article "Shchedryk (song)" (the top voice, written out once with the last ending), then from the MIDI file that Wikipedia's score tool makes from the same score. All 140 notes agree in pitch and rhythm (100%). Both readings come from one typeset score, so a slip in that score would be in both; for that reason the notes from bar 17 to the end were also compared by eye with a public-domain print of Leontovych's choir score on Wikimedia Commons, and they agree.

Can I print and share this sheet music?

Yes. The music of "Shchedryk" is by Leontovych (died 1921) and the Ukrainian words are a folk text; the sheet is made by this site. Peter Wilhousky's English words and his 1936 arrangement have their own copyright, according to Wikipedia, and are not used.