Hark the Herald Angels Sing Trumpet Duet

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Trumpet Duet

MTR 0243 4147

By Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Martin Madan, Felix Mendelssohn

Arr. Eddie Lewis

Embellish your Christmas event with this original arrangement of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, one of the most popular Christmas Carols of all time. It is number five in our Trumpet Christmas Carol Duets series.

This trumpet duet arrangement of  Hark the Herald Angels Sing is just at two minutes long with two verses and some extra-thematic material. The first verse is relatively conservative, being vey similar to the arrangements in Eddie Lewis’ Unadorned Trumpet Hymns series. The second verse of the Christmas carol is more elaborated with fanfares and sixteenth-note embellishments.

Most importantly, the second verse, while it is just a little more creative than the first, remains true to the mood and harmonies of the original Christmas carol. This is the main objective of this Trumpet Christmas Carols Duets series. It is a sequel to the Trumpet Hymn Duets series, which is now a book. Our objective with that book was always to honor the mood and harmonies of the original hymns. This book is a continuation of that series, focusing on the Christmas music of traditional Christian churches.

Other Christmas carols in this trumpet duet series include:

1)       The First Noel

2)       Silent Night

3)       Joy to the World

4)       O Holy Night

There are no tempo changes in this arrangement until you get to the very end. This is a little unusual for Eddie Lewis’ duets in this series but remember the main objective, we are trying to honor the original mood of the Christmas carol. The original Christmas carol is almost march like. The pulse feels like it should continue, uninterrupted.

Trumpet Apprentice Skill Level

The highest note in this trumpet duet arrangement of Hark the Herald Angels Sing is B natural, above the staff. We typically do not allow for single notes to fall outside of a skill level. However, we sometimes make exceptions for our fourth trumpet skill level because of its oddities. B flat is the official cutoff note for our Trumpet Apprentice skill level, but this B natural only occurs once and the rest of the arrangement is clearly in the Trumpet Apprentice skill level.

The technical content is mostly scales and arpeggios and should not take a lot of effort to learn.

Practice Recommendations

As with most of Eddie Lewis’ trumpet duets, this arrangement of Hark the Herald Angels Sing utilizes a lot of pitches beneath the staff. It is easy to play those notes out of tune, so it is a good idea to give particular attention to intonation on this arrangement.

Pay attention to the mordents. These are all “lower mordents” or “inverted mordents”, which means that added note is beneath the embellished note, not above it. There are over twenty of these mordents and they are all descending.

Dynamics in this arrangement are subtle but important. Without them the arrangement loses a lot of its life. So we recommend giving special attention to the dynamics.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing Free Trumpet Play-Along

We have a free trumpet play-along for Hark the Herald Angels Sing in our You Play First Chair video series. The original purpose of the series is educational. Trumpet students from around the world are using these play-along videos to practice their sight reading. But the videos also offer a wonderful opportunity for trumpet players to try these sheet music compositions and arrangements before they purchase them. To access the play-along video for Hark the Herald Angels Sing, please click on the following link:
https://youtu.be/1DBDgTSlaZ4