Sheet Music: God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen

TitleGod Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
Alternate titlesGod Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
God Bless You Merry, Gentlemen
Tidings of Comfort and Joy
ComposerTraditional English
InstrumentationFlute and Guitar chords
KeyE minor
RangeD4–E5
Time signature2/2
Tempo60 BPM
Performance time1:20
Difficulty leveleasy
Download printable scorePDF Sheet Music (61 kB) (preview)
Download audio tracksMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (1.1 MB)
Play-along accompanimentMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (1.1 MB)
Date added2009-12-02
Last updated2009-12-02
Download popularity index☆☆☆☆☆ 3.3 (popular)
Categories
Christmas carols, Hymn tunes, Traditional/Folk

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Wednesday 2 December 2009

Tune of the Day: God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen

Traditional English Christmas carol

Like so many early Christmas songs, “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” was probably born as a direct reaction to the music of the fifteenth-century church. It was arguably the most popular of the early carols, sung for centuries before being published in Britain in 1833.

The carol is even referred to in Charles Dickens' beloved short story A Christmas Carol: “... at the first sound of — ‛God bless you merry, gentlemen! May nothing you dismay!’ — Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.”

The first line of this carol is often object of discussions regarding grammar and punctuation. People comment on two things. First, that the word is always “you” and not “ye”, since “you” is the object of “rest”, while “ye” is the archaic subject pronoun. Second, that there should be a comma after the word “merry”, not before it, because “merry” is the complement of the verb. “Rest” can (or could in the past) take a number of such complements, such as “rest content”, and it was also used transitively as in the Shakespearian “I rest myself content”. In this case the carolers ask that God will rest merry the present company (“Gentlemen”).