Well, it’s a week until Christmas Eve, and, as usual, I’m not even close to being ready, which means it’s probably a good time for Soho the Dog to take a break, and, like Critic-at-Large Moe up there, diligently await the new year. So unless something really juicy comes along—Bernard Haitink, say, finally admitting that Vermeer’s The Concert has been hanging in his rec room this whole time—this space will be fallow until January.

So here’s a little present. One of the books I inherited at my church job was the venerable T. Tertius Noble’s Free Organ Accompaniments to One Hundred Well-Known Hymn Tunes, a written-down compilation of the organist’s oft-improvised prerogative, going harmonically haywire on the last verse of hymns. Noble never got around to “Antioch”—better known as “Joy to the World”—but I did; I came up with this harmonization a few years back, and finally got around to writing it down (click to enlarge):


And it goes—the original, then the arrangement—a little something like this:

http://www.matthewguerrieri.com/sounds/player.swf

I tend to save this for the late service, to see if anybody’s still awake. Happy holidays!