String Orchestra Christmas Carol Arrangements – As a result of our (Manor House String Quartet’s) two Christmas string quartet music CDs, entitled ‘I Saw Three Ships and other carols’ and ‘It Came Upon The Midnight Clear and other carols’, I have now completed arranging 46 Christmas Carols for the combination of string orchestra (Violins 1 & 2, Violas, Cellos and Double Basses, as well as with an optional harp part). You can here sound samples of all 46 arrangements by clicking on the above links to the two albums.If you are interested in acquiring any of them, do get in touch via the Buy our sheet music¬†page on our Manor House Music website (in the ‘Repertoire/Recordings’ menu). Here is a video of us performing ‘Jingle Bells’ for string quartet:

Back in the summer, I was contacted by a gentleman called John Drotleff who was interested in whether any of the arrangements might be available for full string orchestra. John is the director of the ‘West Shore Chorale’, – a group from Ohio who perform concerts with a choir and orchestra. Back then, I hadn’t completed the string orchestra arrangements and agreed to re-arrange two of the carols especially and sent these across via the internet.

This week, I had the great pleasure of receiving a further email from John, attaching two mp3s recorded live at their recent concert, as well as the programme notes. As I had never heard the carols played for string orchestra before, this was a very exciting moment – especially as they were played so beautifully and recorded so well.

I hope to make more carols available for the West Shore Chorale in the future and the whole experience has inspired me to go forward with arranging the carols for various combinations of instruments and to make the sheet music readily available.