Could you name 128 Christmas songs?

I can't, either, yet Hal Leonard, the pop music publishing giant, has pulled together that many public-domain melodies and carols, given them simple arrangements, and included them here.

Standards like "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" and "We Three Kings" are, of course, included, but the bulk of the volume is devoted to pieces ranging from the well-known but marginal, e.g. "O Come O Come Emmanuel", "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", to obscure and sometimes welcome, sometimes dull numbers such as "O Sanctissima", "Fum, Fum, Fum," and "A Virgin Unspotted".

"Easy Piano" here implies a level far lower than Mozart's Sonata Facile or Schumann's Album for The Young or even Bastien's Easy Piano Classics; think "In My Little Birch Canoe" or Play Piano With Mickey, Elmo and Cookie Monster (such a thing doesn't exist yet!) instead. With few exceptions--neither the Russian harmonies of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" nor the grandeur of Handel's "Alleluia!", could've been captured without chorded melody--these arrangements are at the level of primer lesson books, like the Schaum A and B books or Bastein's orange and purple texts.

The result is a collection that could be played after practice by a pianist with perhaps six months' experience (a full year for youngsters) at the instrument, and by everyone else at first glance, possibly after knocking back a few eggnogs. It can be played by puppies on a good day, and by eggnog-drunk puppies when there's a full moon.

The downside of this is that most of the arrangements are so sparse as to sound terrible. Perhaps that's par for the course in an "Easy Piano" book these days, but it needn't be that way. The arpeggiated "O Holy Night," for example, comes off fairly well, although improvising octaves or sixths into the loud parts does it much good. Dynamics are largely left to the pianist, which is fine for the standards but doesn't help at all when the tune is unfamiliar. Some of the rest can be fleshed out by filling out chords, adding arpeggios (aided by the presence of chord names), and throwing in the occasional appogiatura for good measure, but the sort of improvisation needed to fix the rest (voice leading for "O Come O Come Emmanuel", counterpoint for "Angels We Have Heard On High") is beyond those of us with modest classical training.

The arrangements are so sparse that most pieces are even unsuited to the practice of dropping the melody line to come up with an instant accompaniment for vocals. That isn't to say that the Big Book of Christmas Songs can't be one's guide when friends and family are gathered around the piano to sing carols, but rather that the result is less than satisfying.

Practiced improvisers will find much to work with. The rest of us would be better served by a collection--even at the "Easy Piano" level--with more counterpoint and harmony, or better still, separate compilations of this scope for solo playing and vocal accompaniment. However, such things must be bought as special orders even from most music stores; on the other hand, electric-guitar shops, chain bookstores, and public libraries all carry Hal Leonard.

Recommended: No