The Most Well-Known Christmas Song

Silent Night is the most widely translated, most well-know Christmas song the world over!

“The original lyric for the song in German, Stille Nacht, was written by Joseph Mohr and  the melody was composed by Franz X. Gruber. The carol was first performed 191 years ago on 24 December 1818 at the St. Nicholas church in Oberndorf, Austria. Since then the Christmas song has achieved world wide appeal and it is said that there are over 300 translations of the song in the world.” (from http://www.silentnight.web.za/)

To learn more about this beloved carol, check out The Stille Nacht Association for a very thorough history, Silent Night Web for translations in 139 languages, or Stanton’s website for a variety of arrangements for every combination of instruments and voice.

Collections from your favorite Christmas albums!

Do you want to do more than just “sing along” with your favorite Christmas albums this year? Try one of these popular collections for piano/vocal/guitar:

Noel Josh Groban

Groban’s Noel was the first Christmas album in over a decade to hit number one, and then went on to become the best-selling album of the year in 2007. It even passed Elvis’ previous Christmas record by staying at the top of the charts for four consecutive weeks. Now musicians can enjoy playing and singing Groban’s songs in this collection that features arrangements of all 13 tracks. Groban fans should also check out “Believe” from The Polar Express, available as a vocal solo.

Merry Christmas Mariah Carey

Carey’s multi-octave vocal range brought a fresh interpretation of standards and made new songs into classics in this charming holiday collection. This matching folio to her album features nine holiday favorites, including: All I Want for Christmas Is You, Christmas (Baby Baby Please Come Home), Miss You Most at Christmas Time, O Holy Night and more. There is also a new arrangement of “All I Want for Christmas is You” for your SATB, SSA or SAB choir.

The Lost Christmas Eve Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Known for their elaborate concerts, complete with a full light show and dozens of pyrotechnics that are synchronized with their performance, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas songs haves have become among their most popular works. This third and final volume of Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Trilogy features Christmas Bells, Carousels and Time, Siberian Sleigh Ride, and Wizards in Winter.

For more information on this or other holiday collections, contact our Popular Music department.

Glee Songbook!

Can’t get enough of the music from Glee? Now you can learn all the hit songs for fun or performance with the Glee piano/vocal/guitar songbook!

This collection of 16 songs from the show is written for solo vocalist with piano or guitar accompaniment. (If you are looking for choral versions of songs from Glee, check our previous blog.) The songbook includes: Alone, Bust Your Windows, Confessions Part II, Don’t Stop Believin’, Gold Digger, Halo, Hate on Me, It’s My Life, Keep Holding On, No Air, Push It, Rehab, Somebody to Love, Take a Bow, Walking on Sunshine, and You Keep Me Hangin’ On. The hyperlinked titles are also available as singles for immediate download from Stanton’s Digital Delivery.

Check back regularly as we continue to update whenever new songs from Glee become available!

NY or Bust!

Stanton’s is packing up and heading to Rochester for the NYSSMA Conference December 3rd-6th—look for us in the exhibition hall if you’re going to be there too! We’ll be bringing lots of sheet music of all kinds for you to browse and purchase, as well as several of our helpful and educated staff members to answer whatever questions you may have.
If you’re already a Stanton’s customer, stop by and say hello so that we can put faces with names. Or, if you’ve never shopped with us, please come by our booth and allow us to give you the full “Stanton’s experience!”
For more information about all of our planned traveling this winter, check our previous blog.

GLEE Update

Here in the choral department at Stanton’s Sheet Music, our phones are ringing off the hook with requests for choral music from the Fox hit show Glee!  So far (seven episodes into the season), the songs from the show available for choirs are: Don’t Stop Believin’ (originally recorded by Journey) and Rehab (by Amy Winehouse – while the message of the song is pretty inappropriate for high school singers, it sure is a catchy tune!).  And coming soon: Can’t Fight This Feeling (sung by Finn in the pilot) and I Say a Little Prayer (the Cheerio’s glee club audition song in episode 2).

Some other songs heard on the show are available in choral arrangements, though these are not the exact arrangements featured.  These include: Mister Cellophane, On My Own, Respect, Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat, Where Is Love?, Mercy, Taking Chances, Tonight, Cabaret, Walking on Sunshine, and from last night’s episode, Keep Holding On.

Songs offered for soloists are available from such diverse artists as Beyonce (Single Ladies, Halo), Usher (Confessions Part II), Katy Perry (I Kissed a Girl), Celine Dion (Taking Chances), Kanye West (Gold Digger), Carrie Underwood (Last Name), Salt-n-Pepa (Push It), Rihanna (Take a Bow), Jazmine Sullivan (Bust Your Windows), Heart (Alone), Bon Jovi (It’s My Life), and Queen (Somebody to Love).  In last night’s episode, we also heard No Air (by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown).

While not all of the music featured on the show is available for choirs, we’re hopeful that publishers will continue producing new arrangements (we’re especially hoping for an arrangement of Queen’s Somebody to Love or Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life!).  For more information, check out our previous blog about music from “Glee,” or contact us.

UPDATE (11/3/2009) – Somebody to Love, as performed on “Glee,” is now available for choirs!  Don’t miss it!

Hallowe’en for Piano

Nearly everybody loves Hallowe’en!  For piano teachers who are planning a Hallowe’en recital, or for those wanting to celebrate the season, we have a varied selection of fun pieces and books to suit players of nearly every level of difficulty.

The Halloween Songbook is a book of easy popular songs such as The Addams Family Theme, Monster Mash, and The Munster’s Theme.

 

Happy Halloween is a collection of  spooky originals by Jane Bastien. The difficulty of the pieces ranges from primer to second grade.  This is a long-time favorite. The pieces are clever, represent different musical styles,  and imitate the various spooky sounds of the season.  Titles include Black Cat Boogie, The Ghosts’ Ball Game, and Witches Rock.  

 From Alfred Publishing comes a list of Halloween pieces written by their talented composers of educational piano music. These include Dennis Alexander’s “Broomstick Capers” and Margaret Goldston’s “Beware of Ghosts!”.

For more information concerning these or other products, visit us at stantons.com or email us at keyboard@stantons.com

POP goes the sheet music!

Stanton’s receives many calls and emails that begin with “I’ve got a great piece of music here that’s pretty old…” and, sadly, that conversation often ends with “I’m sorry to tell you that piece is permanently out of print.” What does that mean for you, the director/musician when something is permanently out of print (POP)? Read on to find some of the most common questions and their answers:

1) Why do things go POP?
When we inform someone that a certain piece is POP, the most common response we receive is “I can’t believe it—that piece is so good!” While it is true that sometimes a piece is taken out of print due to lack of sales, this is not the only reason. Sometimes there are copyright changes, royalty disputes and other business issues that have nothing to do with sales. Even if a piece is taken out of print due to low sales, that’s not necessarily an indicator of quality. A piece that is “good” may also be very difficult, or extremely contemporary or use an unusual voicing/instrumentation, all of which could lead to low sales despite how “good” it is.

2) Why does Stanton’s show POP titles on their website?
When Stanton’s determines that a piece is no longer in print, we indicate that on our website so that you, the customer, can also have that information. If you were looking for a certain piece and simply didn’t see it listed, you may just conclude that it’s not available from Stanton’s, or that you had typed something incorrectly.
Sometimes a piece that is permanently out of print is not yet listed that way on our website. While we make every effort to keep the information on our website up-to-date, we usually don’t learn that a piece has gone POP until we try to order it and the publisher says “sorry, no.” Please call us if you have questions about the status of a particular piece.

3) How do I determine that something is POP?
As stated above, we encourage you to contact Stanton’s whenever you have questions about a piece of music. If you are interested in doing some research yourself, you can check the website of the publisher to see if they have more information. If the music is from a publisher that is no longer in business, their copyrights, or “imprints,” are probably still owned by another publisher; the same arrangement may still be in print from the “new” owner of that imprint. You can find more details about defunct publishers on the Music Publishers Association’s directory of imprints.

4) Do I have any options for obtaining this music?
Once you have determined that something is POP, you may contact the publisher to request permission to photocopy (Stanton’s can give you their contact information) if you have at least one original copy. Especially in the case of churches and schools, the publishers will often grant this request for little or no cost. The publisher will then send you a letter stating that you have permission to make copies. If you do not have an original copy, you might acquire a copy from someone else’s library by sending out a query on the ChoralNet listserv, or a similar forum. IT IS ILLEGAL TO MAKE PHOTOCOPIES WITHOUT THE PUBLISHER’S PERMISSION, EVEN WHEN SOMETHING IS NO LONGER IN PRINT!

5) This music is still in print, so why is it so hard for me to get it?!
In addition to “in print” and “out of print,” there are a few other ways to designate the status of a piece of music. It may be “temporarily out of print” (TOP) or “on backorder” (OBO), which means that the publisher is sold out of the music in their warehouse and will need to print some more. It also may be designated as “print on demand” (POD) or an “archive edition,” meaning that it is not something that the publisher keeps in stock, but they will print special copies on request. A piece of music might be a “special import” that is not kept in stock in the US, but that a publisher can get from their international partners. ALL of these situations may affect how long it will take to get your music and how much it will cost.

6) Is there any chance that it WILL come back into print?
No. There may be other arrangements of the same composition available, but once something goes POP, it will not come back.

Permanent means permanent.

Singer’s Library of Musical Theatre

If you or your students routinely perform songs from the Broadway repertoire, these books are for you!  Each book in the series of Singer’s Library of Musical Theatre  includes 2 CD’s of recorded piano accompaniment.
There are 2 volumes in each voice range: Soprano, Mezzo/Alto, Tenor, and Bass.
The fun thing about these books is the fact that the songs are in the same keys as in the original Broadway shows. The shows cover a wide time period, from the 1885 “Mikado”, to more recent shows like the Broadway production of  “Disney’s ” Beauty and the Beast”  and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”. For more  information concerning these products please check our website at stantons.com.

We Remember: Mary Travers

Until the early 1960s, popular music was almost solely a means of entertainment–then came Peter, Paul, and Mary. This trio from Greenwich Village was able to weave a timely message of peace and justice into the mainstream music scene in a way that reached more people than had ever been done before. The world lost a true pioneer of music and humanity when Mary Travers, the unmistakable raw energy and blonde female third of Peter, Paul, and Mary, died last week at age 72 after a battle with leukemia and the side effects of chemotherapy.

Together with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, Mary Travers sang America through the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War with such songs as “If I Had a Hammer”, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, and “Puff (the Magic Dragon)”. Continuing in the tradition of Pete Seeger and the Weavers, Peter, Paul, and Mary asked America to sing along at concerts, protests, and rallies, including the 1963 March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Along the way, the trio also helped introduce the world to a host of talented songwriters, including Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, and John Denver, whose “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was one of the their biggest hits. The trio disbanded in 1970, but reunited in 1978 and continued to record and tour until mid-2009, when Travers insisted on performing to carry on her message for the world, despite requiring a wheelchair and oxygen. Unlike many of their contemporaries, whose musical styles and message changed with the times, Peter, Paul, & Mary continued to cling to their causes and folk music, noting the importance of “carry[ing] it on” for future generations. In later years, the trio made several televised concerts for PBS, many of which were targeted toward teaching children the impact music can have on peace in society.

While not a principal songwriter or producer for the trio, Travers’ contributions to the group were boundless. Her powerful voice, energetic interpretations, and trademark long blonde hair defined the trio for many, and her intelligence and awareness were often the conscience of the group. In early years, she was directed by their manager to remain elusive onstage by focusing only on the songs and not engaging in stage banter. However, in later years, especially after her own solo career and side projects lecturing on the role of music in society and hosting an interview show for BBC, she began to be the social commentator and frequent comedienne of the group during concerts.

Travers leaves behind a tremendous legacy of strength, hope, and peace through music, and her passing leaves an enormous hole in one of the most successful partnerships—a nearly 50-year association—in music history. In a statement, Yarrow wrote, “I have no idea what it will be like to have no Mary in my world”. Stookey included, “I am deadened and heartsick beyond words to consider a life without Mary Travers”. However, Travers’ legacy will live on through the music of her surviving partners and all whose lives she impacted. As stated in a very recent letter from President Barack Obama to Travers, “Your passion for music and your ability to stir change has helped define a genre and a generation.”

Special Thanks to Contributer:
Brandon Moss, Cincinnati Ohio
Music Educator and Stanton’s Customer

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