Christmas carol, sheet music with note names
O Little Town of Bethlehem: notes, key and chords
O Little Town of Bethlehem in G major, 4/4: all 57 notes with letter names, chords, range D4 to E5, words and a worksheet. Printable PDF.
Two kinds of page: the tune with a letter name under every note, and a worksheet with the names left blank.
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Quick answer
"O Little Town of Bethlehem" is 57 notes in 16 bars of 4/4, in G major, with a quarter-note pick-up and a range of D4 to E5 (14 semitones). This is the American tune ST. LOUIS by Lewis Redner (1868). The page has the melody with letter names, a version to play, the five stanzas of Phillips Brooks's words as printed in the 1920 hymnal, and the checks.
O Little Town of Bethlehem at a glance
- Key
- G major (one sharp)
- Time signature
- 4/4, with a one-beat pick-up
- Range
- D4 to E5, 14 semitones
- Notes and bars
- 57 notes, 16 bars
- First note
- B4 (scale degree 3)
- Last note
- G4
- Words
- Phillips Brooks, 1868
- Tune
- ST. LOUIS, Lewis H. Redner, 1868
- Notes outside the key signature
- 2 (A♯)
- Why it is free to use
- Brooks died in 1893 and Redner in 1908; the edition used here is a US government hymnal of 1920
- Level
- Harder: wider than a major sixth (14 semitones); wider than an octave; 2 notes outside the key signature; a leap of a minor sixth or more. How the level is worked out
- Tempo
- about quarter note = 84 when played at normal speed
Press a note on the staff to hear it. The sound is made in your browser from the notes of this page (a plain synthesiser, not a recording).
O Little Town of Bethlehem
G major · 4/4 · melody with note names
Key G major (one sharp: F♯) Range D4 to E5 Words Phillips Brooks, 1868 Music tune ST. LOUIS, Lewis H. Redner, 1868
Scale of G major G A B C D E F♯ I G: G B D IV C: C E G V D: D F♯ A
Melody: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 35, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikisource page revision 11525745 of 2021-07-23), checked note by note against 2 other editions. Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/o-little-town-of-bethlehem-notes
O Little Town of Bethlehem: name the notes
G major · 4/4 · worksheet
Name Date Class
Write the letter name of every note on the line under it. The key signature tells you which notes are sharp: F♯. The last note of a tune is usually the home note, G.
Check your answers against the sheet with the note names. Extra: circle every note that is a G, the home note of the key.
Melody: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 35, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0). Free to print and share. musictheoryprint.com/charts/o-little-town-of-bethlehem-notes
The notes of O Little Town of Bethlehem, bar by bar
57 notes in 16 bars, after a pick-up, in G major. Letter names, the do-re-mi syllables (movable do: do is G) and the chord symbols of the setting, where there are any. “held” means a tied note that is not played again.
| Bar | Notes | do re mi |
|---|---|---|
| pick-up | B | mi |
| 1 | B B A♯ B | mi mi ri mi |
| 2 | D C E A | sol fa la re |
| 3 | G F♯ G A D | do ti do re sol |
| 4 | B B | mi mi |
| 5 | B B E D | mi mi la sol |
| 6 | D C E A | sol fa la re |
| 7 | G F♯ G B A | do ti do mi re |
| 8 | G B | do mi |
| 9 | B B A G | mi mi re do |
| 10 | F♯ F♯ F♯ | ti ti ti |
| 11 | E F♯ G A | la ti do re |
| 12 | B B | mi mi |
| 13 | B B A♯ B | mi mi ri mi |
| 14 | D C E E | sol fa la la |
| 15 | D G B A | sol do mi re |
| 16 | G | do |
What the tune is made of
How the melody moves
Each of the 56 moves from one note to the next, counted.
Which note lengths it uses
Every note counted by its length, as a fraction of a whole note.
Most-used note: B4 (18 times). Longest run of one repeated note: 4. Different pitches: 10, made from 8 note names (some are used in two octaves). Biggest leap: 12 semitones.
The words of O Little Town of Bethlehem
Verse 1
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie !
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth,
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
Verse 2
For Christ is born of Mary
And gathered all above
While mor - tals sleep, the an - gels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morn -ing stars, to - geth- er,
Pro - claim the ho - ly birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace _to men on earth!
Verse 3
How silently, how silently
The Wondorus gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his com ing,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, stil
The dear Christ enters in.
Verse 4
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and en - ter in;
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas an - gels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel !
Source: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 35, as transcribed on Wikisource; public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikisource page revision 11525745 of 2021-07-23. Words as printed in the hymnal and typed in on Wikisource; the hyphens that split words into syllables are taken out. Verse numbers are not in the source.
How the notes were checked
Not one note on this page was typed in or remembered. The melody is read by a program from The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 35, as transcribed on Wikisource (public domain (1920 US government publication); transcription CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikisource page revision 11525745 of 2021-07-23). A second program then looked for the same notes, in the same order, in each of the editions below, which were typeset and encoded by other people. The number is the share of this page’s 57 notes that are found there, whatever key the other edition is in.
| Edition | Licence | Notes there | Same pitches | Same pitches and lengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mutopia Project, "St. Louis (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop)Mutopia-2008/02/19-1292; in another key, compared after moving it by -2 semitones | Public Domain | 57 | 100% | 96% |
| Wikipedia, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (score 1 in the article)revision 1334906764 of 2026-01-26; in another key, compared after moving it by -2 semitones | CC BY-SA 4.0 | 57 | 100% | 100% |
The rhythm column is lower than the pitch column because editions write the same long notes in different ways (a half note and a tied pair, a held last note) and because performance MIDI files shorten or lengthen notes. Pitch is the part that matters for the letter names.
O Little Town of Bethlehem: questions people ask
What are the notes of "O Little Town of Bethlehem"?
In G major the opening, "O little town of Bethlehem", is B B B A♯ B D C. The only note outside the key signature is A♯, which appears 2 times; it leans up to the note after it.
Who wrote the tune?
Lewis Redner, the organist of Brooks's church in Philadelphia. Wikipedia quotes his account: Brooks asked him for a tune for the Sunday-school carol, he worked on it in haste, woke in the night "hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear", jotted down the treble, and filled in the harmony on the Sunday morning, in 1868. Rev. Dr. Huntington printed it in his Sunday-school tune book, The Church Porch, and named it "Saint Louis".
Why does the tune in Britain sound different?
Wikipedia says that in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, and sometimes in the United States, the English hymn tune FOREST GREEN is used instead; Vaughan Williams adapted it from a folk ballad he collected in 1903 and it was first published in The English Hymnal of 1906. This page has ST. LOUIS only.
Who wrote the words?
Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), an Episcopal priest in Philadelphia and later in Boston. Wikipedia says he was inspired by a visit to Bethlehem in 1865 and wrote the poem three years later for his church; it was first published in The Sunday School Service and Hymn Book of the Diocese of Ohio in five stanzas of eight lines, of which the fourth is left out of most books.
What key is it in, and how wide is it?
The 1920 hymnal prints it in G major (one sharp), 4/4. G major is the number 3 key of 24 in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (8.1% of 1,462 songs) and number 2 in the Mutopia Project (14.5% of 1,974 pieces). The range is D4 to E5, 14 semitones; 16.3% of the first vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus have a smaller range and 72.6% a larger one.
Can I print this sheet music?
Yes. The words (1868), the tune ST. LOUIS (1868) and the 1920 edition are out of copyright, and the sheet is made by this site.
musictheoryprint.com · free to print and share
O Little Town of Bethlehem in real music: the numbers
In G major the tune uses 8 of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, 1 of them outside the key signature. It moves by step 28 times out of 56, and ends on the home note, as 75% of major-key art songs do.
This tune against real art songs
| What | This tune | OpenScore Lieder (880 major-key songs) |
|---|---|---|
| First note | B4 (degree 3) | 32.5% start on degree 3 |
| Last note | G4 (degree 1) | 75.1% end on degree 1 |
| Range of the tune | 14 semitones (D4 to E5) | 16% of 1,458 first vocal lines span fewer semitones, 73% more |
The art-song numbers are for the first vocal line of every major-key song whose key signature does not change; the carol numbers are counted on the melody printed above.
How common G major is
| Collection | Items with a key | Share in G major | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenScore Lieder | 1,462 | 8.1% | 3 of 24 |
| Mutopia | 1,974 | 14.5% | 2 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 13,669 | 9.8% | 3 of 24 |
| MusicBrainz works | 5,340 | 8.9% | 2 of 24 |
| Open Opus work titles | 3,587 | 8.7% | 3 of 24 |
| AcousticBrainz recordings | 63,124 | 6.7% | 4 of 24 |
Counts of key signatures (and estimated major or minor) in the collections the site has measured; see the key page for G major.
Where the tune sits among singers' ranges
| Voice type (as labelled in the scores) | Typical range of a real song line | This tune (D4 to E5) |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | E♭4 to F5 | fits if moved up 1 semitone |
| Alto / Contralto | C4 to C5 | wider than this range by 2 semitones |
| Tenor | F3 to F♯4 | wider than this range by 1 semitone |
| Baritone | C3 to E4 | fits if moved down 12 semitones |
| Bass | A2 to C4 | fits if moved down 16 semitones |
Typical range = the median across song lines of the lowest and highest notes (ignoring one stray note each side), from 285 vocal lines in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus. "Fits" means both ends of the tune are inside it.
Method
- The carol's own numbers are counted by a script on the decoded melody (tied notes counted once, rests ignored).
- Art-song numbers are read from the files behind the site's statistics pages (OpenScore Lieder Corpus: key and scale-degree counts for the first vocal line of every piece, vocal ranges of 1,458 lines).
- Key counts for Mutopia and MusicBrainz come from the same published statistics; a key is counted from its key signature.
Data: computed from the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), 1,462 scores. Snapshot: commit 6b2dc542ce (2026-04-07).
Background
Excerpts from open reference works, reproduced as published (references, images and tables removed). Every excerpt names its source, licence and original article.
History of "O Little Town of Bethlehem"
Overview
"O Little Town of Bethlehem" is a Christmas carol. Based on an 1868 text written by Phillips Brooks, the carol is popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but to different tunes: in the United States and Canada, to "St. Louis" by Brooks' collaborator, Lewis Redner; and in the United Kingdom and Ireland to "Forest Green", a tune collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams and first published in the 1906 English Hymnal.
St. Louis
As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, "Redner, have you ground out that music yet to 'O Little Town of Bethlehem'?" I replied, "No", but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.
Source: Wikipedia, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-01-26.
Sources and licences for the text, scores and recordings on this page are on the credits page.
Sources: The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920), hymn 35, as transcribed on Wikisource, Mutopia Project, "St. Louis (hymntune)" (Steve Dunlop), Wikipedia, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (score 1 in the article).