Lo, How a Rose has long been a favorite carol of mine, and my arrangement was created in 2014 as an audio holiday greeting to be emailed to friends and family. It sets the melody with varying density of double-stops and chords, sometimes in left-hand pizzicato, shifting registers for variety in the melodic voice.

In some ways, this created a template for the treatment of such tunes in my 2016 flurry of arrangements. The nine arrangements I created in 2016 were completed over about two weeks, when a concert for which I had promised a 45 minute program of holiday music for a senior home was fast approaching. Not surprisingly, a general template evolved quickly including a statement of the melody, followed by more “verses” which support the melody using double-stops and chords — as in my Lo, How a Rose — and sometimes elaborating the melody with filigree, returning to a more clear concluding statement.

The Good King Wenceslas arrangement is a good example of this template. In Three Ships and Three Kings, I play on the similarities of these two carols, introducing and elaborating on each separately, then bringing them together phrase by phrase in the final statement. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas deviates from the others in that there is little elaboration on the melody. Instead it employs a few double-stops for harmonic interest and provides connecting material between the phrases of the song.

— Elizabeth Start