The original "Jingle Bells"

One of the recent posts on the Minnesota Public Radio blog called Classical Notes, a classical music blog I subscribe to, mentioned a radio show that featured Philipp Brunelle and the vocal group he founded, VocalEssence.

During the one-hour show, Mr. Brunelle talked about the history of Christmas songs which turned out to be very enlightening. For example, there is after all a distinction made between a Christmas carol and a Christmas hymn. And, as expected, many songs started out with a melody very different from what we are familiar with nowadays. Often, the original melody was much more complicated that many parts eventually got simplified to make it easier for"less-talented singers" as the song was passed on and performed through the years.

Thus, what I considered a highlight was when VocalEssence performed "Jingle Bells" using the original melody as it was composed by John Pierpont way back in 1857. Being a purist when it comes to music, I was curious to hear what the original melody was like. As it turns out, I liked the original with its more "challenging" melody and now even prefer it to the newer version, which I find slightly boring in comparison. I also eventually found a pdf file of the original(?) sheet music at Project Gutenberg and, having scanned through it, simply can't stop the song from playing over and over in my head.