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 have also 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.