Christmas Song Lyrics & Music
The Holly and the Ivy
Christmas Song Lyrics and free sheet music for your intermediate piano players and now for your beginners as well!
Three energetic arrangements of Holly and Ivy with flowing left hand chords, a Middle C arrangement with melody in shared hands, and a printable PDF of the lyrics to Holly and Ivy (bottom of the page).
A Middle C arrangement
Please scroll down the page to find the links to the free printable PDFs.
I have been offering this simple version of Holly and Ivy to young students as one of their "write the note names" assignment choices. Christmas songs are a popular choice this time of year!
If you want an accompaniment, a C chord will be enough.
Holly and Ivy's Christmas song lyrics are little-known to most people. Perhaps partly for that reason, the song feels very fresh.
A melody with single notes
Please scroll down the page to find the links to the free printable PDFs.
Here is a closeup of that arrangement:
The left hand chord pattern is fairly easy, but coordinating the two hands together is not! It helps to treat this song as a duet with your student for a couple of weeks, trading places on the piano bench as you switch parts.
Rhythm practice
What I have found very useful with complicated eighth note patterns is what I call "Lap-Tap" or "Piano lid tapping" practice: each hand, on the lap or on the closed piano lid, taps its own pattern against the pattern of the other hand.
No worry about playing the right notes... just rhythm practice.
Try reinforcing the melody's rhythm by doing this as you sing the Christmas song lyrics.
I put this on my student's lesson assignment sheet for the week to do at home, also: "Lap-Tap counting 1x each day before playing with notes."
A melody with added chord tones
The second version is much harder, because of the added chord tones in the right hand in the second half of the song.
It is possible your student may struggle with the parallel 6ths in the right hand unless they know and enjoy chord inversions!
Please scroll down the page to find the links to the free printable PDFs.
A non-stop left hand
The third arrangement of The Holly and the Ivy is my favorite because of the driving motion in the left hand:
Please scroll down the page to find the links to the free printable PDFs.
Putting the hands together
Now, your students will actually be ready to play the non-stop left hand broken chord pattern long before they can easily play the chord tones of the right hand, especially the parallel 6ths, at least fast enough for The Holly and the Ivy.
So you might suggest to your students a combination of arrangement 1 (the first one shown) with its easy right hand, and arrangement 3 with the always-moving chords.
That is usually how my students start this Christmas song.
An especially tricky spot
I find the bottom line in the left hand tricky to execute when this song is moving fast. Therefore, I suggest substituting this left hand figure:
I've not written out a separate arrangement for this ending... instead, I've CROSSED NOTES OUT on students' sheets!
The pretty lyrics
Here are the Christmas carol lyrics for Holly and Ivy:
Please scroll down the page to find the links to the free printable PDFs.
I hope you enjoy using these free Christmas songs!
The links to the piano sheets:
Download Middle C shared-hands arrangement for piano
Download Holly and Ivy free sheet music for intermediate piano with left hand chords
Print free piano sheet music Holly and Ivy with harmony in right hand
Download free online Christmas music The Holly and the Ivy hardest version
The lyrics sheet:
Download Christmas Song Lyrics "The Holly and the Ivy"
Dianna:
Your website is a light in the darkness. THANK YOU for all you do in helping to spread the love of music. It matters!
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Cathy:
I recently purchased your arrangement of The Moldau (a longtime favorite of mine).
I wasn't sure if any of my students would be interested in it, but to my amazement 3 of my students LOVE it. Thank you so much for making your great arrangement.
Alicia:
I just wanted to say THANK YOU!!!
I started teaching my kids music and am now teaching others. This is exactly what I was looking for!! Thank you!!
Comments
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Favorite Song
Hi, I'm 13 and I've been playing piano for about 9 years and this is my second year playing Christmas songs on the piano instead of regular classic songs …
Left hand Christmas music
Looking for Christmas music for left hand, piano solo. Thanks, intermediate, traditional and others
Hi, Cheryl. Do a Google search for:
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About the Author
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.
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