Deck the Hall
About the Music
- Title: Deck the Hall
- Alternate Title(s): Deck the Hall, Deck the Hall with Holly
- Composer: Old Welsh Air (Nos Galan)
- Lyrics: Anonymous
Notes About the Music
- Sources: Hymns and Carols of Christmas
- Jones, Edward. Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards. London, 1794. 159.
- The source material for this differs slightly from the modern version. The final six bars form a lopsided call and response phrase with the lyric "don we now our gay apparel, Troll the ancient Christmas carol" answered by the the two-bar "fa la la" section. This is a deviation from the rest of the tune where four bar phrases are divided into a two-bar call and a two-bar response. Nos Galan and most modern versions of this song include these measures (or variations thereof), so I have included them here.
- Modern versions of this tune raise the fourth degree of the scale by a half step in the 11th bar. Nos Galan and early versions of Deck the Hall all have the natural fourth degree.
