Vonnahme family blog

As part of doing the family musical number on Christmas Eve, I typeset our own sheet music for the first time ever, using the cool free tool GNU Lilypond.

So, without further ado, here is the sheet music, including lyrics and guitar chords, in PDF format and in the Lilypond markup language, in case anyone out there has a use for it.

I should also give credit to Sufjan Stevens for recording the song on a weird kids album from Paper Bag Records and thereby introducing me to it.

I love the lyrics. In the middle of a setting where humans in Rome and Jerusalem were acting like the human-devouring empire-beasts of Daniel’s prophecies, we have beasts of the stable, receiving the (later traditional) gift of speech on Christmas Eve and becoming more humanlike in worship around the newborn Jesus. The Messiah’s birth is the beginning of the New Creation, in which the first creation will eventually be fully redeemed and restored.

At our Suzuki parent class, one assignment was to share our ideas for making instrument practice fun for our preschool kids. One of the parents mentioned she was surprised she couldn’t turn up more ideas on the web, so here’s a start - please add your own to the comments section on this post !

One of the most daunting ideas conveyed in the parent class is basically “if your child doesn’t succeed it’s your fault (or the teacher’s) for not providing the right environment”. It has been interesting to think about what really motivates my son, or me for that matter.

(more…)

Bobby pointed out this collection of quality free Christmas carol sheet music to me. I’ve been wishing for something just like that for a few years!