Carol of the Drum
Sung by the Trapp Family Singers
Christmastide is here, and so are our Christmas offers at Word & Song! Please bear with us as we catch up on our posts, which were delayed by Substack’s “housecleaning.”
I’ve written about a lot of great and renowned composers of popular music here at Sometimes a Song. And I’ve written about folk songs whose origin is rather obscure. Although the composer of our song for today published over 600 musical scores in her career as a music professor and choral director, Katherine Davis is best know for only two pieces. One is a hymn we have written about earlier, “Let All Things Now Living” (set to the tune Ash Grove), and the other is one of the most beloved Christmas songs of the 20th Century in America and around the world.
Miss Davis was just shy of 50 years old in 1941, with the second world war raging, when she composed her “Carol of the Drum,” inspired by the French carol, “Pat-a-pan,” set to a poem by Bernard de la Monnoye (1700). (Monnoye’s poem featured two boys, one with a flute and the other with a drum, by the way.) So Davis’ tune and lyric were indebted to a centuries-old carol. I believe that this inspiration is what gives her “Carol of the Drum” the authenticity and timeless feeling of a true folk song.
Not much notice was taken of “The Carol of the Drum” at its original publication in 1941. But a decade later, a now famous refugee family from Austria chose to record it on their first Christmas album. The version by the Trapp Family Singers was released by Decca Records in 1952. These early recordings by the Trapp Family feature simple arrangements with little orchestration, but are quite lovely. Those of you who know this song as “The Little Drummer Boy” in a re-named version (orchestrated by Harry Simone and recorded by the Simone Chorale in 1958) will note a great difference in tempo and presentation between the two performances. The Harry Simone version was so popular with American audiences that it reached the Billboard Top 40 for six years in a row. If you were growing up in the late 1950’s through the 1960’s, this is the version of the song you heard “in the air” every Christmas everywhere you went. Some of our readers will no doubt recall the song from the excellent performance of it by the Vienna Boys’ Choir in the animated television production of “The Little Drummer Boy” (1968).
And so I present to you here all three lovely versions of a classic American carol. Again, Tony and I wish all of you the great blessings of the Christmas season.
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I LOVE the clarity of the Trapp women’s voices, and the simplicity of the arrangement. Something in the harmony reminds me of music I have heard performed by people of the Plain communities, Amish and Mennonites, who use vocal harmony, without the use of musical instruments, and without a lot of flourishes. Simply wonderful, in fact. Thank you for keeping us tuned-in to the good, the true, the beautiful.
The Trapp Family Christmas album is one of my favorites! I found the lip at a library ale many years ago then later replaced with a cd. We were listening to it this morning on our way to church! Thank you for this story! I always preferred the Trapp version and now I understand the difference a little better.