All I Want For Christmas Is A Concertina

[Roger Hare]

Whilst looking for a particular 16th/17th century Christmas tune on the ABC site,

I stumbled across the following little gem. I can't find any other reference to this

song in the Cnet forums so with a certain amount of trepidation on my part - here

it is:

 

X:1
T:All I Want For Christmas Is A Concertina
Z:Martin_Döring <mdoering:comlineag.de>
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:G % transposed from A
D|[bd] [bd] [bd] [ce]|[bd] [Ac] [GB] [bd]|[Ac] ([F3A3]|[F3A3]) [bd]|\
[df] [df] [cf] [eg]|[fa] [eg] [df] [ce]|[ce] ([b3d3]|[bd]) d/e/ d D|
[bd] [bd] [bd] [ce]|[bd] [Ac] [GB] [bd]|[Ac] ([F3A3]|[F3A3]) [bd]|\
[df] [df] [df] [ce]|[bd] [Ac] F [FA]|[FA] ([b,3G3]|[b,3G3]) D|
[bd] [bd] [bd] [ce]|[bd] [Ac] [GB] [bd]|z [A2c2] [bd]|[Ac] [F2A2] [bd]|\
[df] [df] [df] [eg]|[fa] [eg] [df] [ce]|[ce] ([b3d3]|[b3d3]) D|
[bd] [bd] [bd] [ce]|[bd] [Ac] [GB] [bd]|z [E2c2] [bd]|[c2e2] [eg] [eg]|\
[df] [bd] [ce] [Ac]|[bd] [GB] [Ac] [FA]|([b4G4]|[b,3G3]) [bd]|
|:[ce] z [E2c2]|B/c/ d [G2B2]|A/G/ A/B/ c/F/ G/A/|G/F/ G/A/ B/G/ A/B/|
[ce] z [E2c2]|B/c/ d [G2B2]|A/G/ A/B/ c/F/ G/A/|1 G B/d/ [bg] [bd]:|2 G B/d/ g |]
%
W:My father asked me what I want for Christmas.
W:A bicycle, a baseball bat and glove.
W:What I told him he found really quite surprising.
W:Something to play the music that I love.
W:
W:Refrain:
W:All I want for Christmas is a concertina.
W:The people love to hear its happy sound.
W:All I want for Christmas is a concertina,
W:so I can play my polkas all year 'round.
W:
W:My mother asked about this concertina.
W:Would it be played or would it lay around?
W:I said that if I got a concertina,
W:I'd learn to play and never put it down.
W:
W:Refrain
W:
W:The years have come and gone now since that Christmas.
W:I've played around this country far and wide.
W:At times I think about that Christmas morning,
W:and the gift that had my squeezebox stuck inside.
W:
W:Refrain

 

You guys probably all know it, but it was completely new to me, and it raised a bit

of a smile...

 

It sounds positively evil using the electronic .mid file generated from within EasyABC,

but when I played it using the concertina font in MuseScore, it didn't sound too bad?

 

Takes cover, hurriedly..

 

Roger

Edited October 18, 2015 by lachenal74693

[JimLucas]

Whilst looking for a particular 16th/17th century Christmas tune on the ABC site,

I stumbled across the following little gem. I can't find any other reference to this

song in the Cnet forums so with a certain amount of trepidation on my part - here

it is:

 

T:All I Want For Christmas Is A Concertina

You guys probably all know it, but it was completely new to me, and it raised a bit

of a smile...

 

It sounds positively evil using the electronic .mid file generated from within EasyABC,

but when I played it using the concertina font in MuseScore, it didn't sound too bad?

 

I've run across this song before, and it's in my files, but (like so many others) I haven't yet gotten around to learning it. Don't have my resources handy, but memory says it has a known author/composer and stems from the American-Midwest community of Chemnitzer concertina players. (The reference to "polkas" in the lyrics would support that supposition.)

[Roger Hare]

 

> ...and stems from the American-Midwest community of Chemnitzer concertina players...

 

I wondered about the German connection - that would explain it?

 

I don't know that I intend to learn it, but it was the firdt two lines of the

refrain which made me smile.

 

R

[gcoover]

It would be great if someone could track down the author of this song, but it will probably take some major sleuthing. Since I wanted to include the lyrics in the "Christmas Concertina" book I contacted the Chemnitzer-playing folks at the United States Concertina Association and the International Polka Association and although they knew the song well, they had never seen it published and did not know of a composer or copyright holder. I always try to give credit where credit is due, so perhaps the cnet dragnet will be able to uncover the song's true creator. I'll even throw in a free copy of the book as a small incentive!

Gary

Edited October 22, 2015 by gcoover

[Zak vdV]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sd-4pGuByw

[chas]

And youtube throws up another of their concertina-based songs:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUT3nucmRIA

[Sebastian]

Martin Döring is a german concertina player. He is the owner of the german concertina forum. It is located at http://konzertina.org. Alas, since two or three months he has problems with his hoster, so the adress currently doesn't work. But, if you want, I could point him to this thread.