Zoltán Kodály

ÚjesztendÅ't köszöntÅ'

The piece was written originally for equal voice choir in 1929. A mixed-choir adaptation was made in 1961 at the request of Oxford University Press. This appeared in print in the same year with an English text under the title A Christmas Carol in a collection of Christmas songs, as well as in a separate print. The musical material of the mixed-choir version largely follows the original. There is one essential difference in verse 5, beginning at bar 35 ( Babe all holy) where the tenor solo appears with a delightful eight-bar countermelody not found in the original. Since this version only appeared in Kodály s lifetime with an English text, this has been retained, but we havealso provided the original Hungarian text upon which the equal voice version is based. Zoltán Kodály s complete choral works for mixed voices were published in a new, extended, edition in 2018 (Z. 6725 and Z. 6725A). This volume containing 51 compositions has been edited by the renowned conductor Péter Erdei, one of the most devoted interpreters of Kodály s choral works. The new edition takes into consideration the manuscript sources for the compositions housed in the Kodály Archives in Budapest. The publication features new, easily-legible music scores edited on uniform principles. For better readability, the new edition is printed in a slightly larger format than previous editions. The present publication is an offprint from the renewed edition of Kodály s complete choral works for mixed voices. It has the same format as the volume, and has been printed on excellent-quality pale-yellow paper.