Thanksgiving: Thousands of Pieces of Free Music to Enhance Your Holiday

Thanksgiving has two aspects: the religious side and the nationalist side, since Thanksgiving, observed by law in the United States on the fourth Thursday of November, is unique to the United States. I enjoy classical music, and in fact, wrote two articles about classical music for Halloween, which you could enjoy throughout the year (here and here).

So, I have chosen two different sites to provide you with thousands of pieces of free music appropriate for Thanksgiving. You can access all of this free music on the Internet whenever you wish, not just at Thanksgiving.

Free Hymns for Thanksgiving

Since 1996 Cyberhymnal or Nethymnal, as it is now called (website) has been an amazing archive of Christian hymns: words, music, and biographies of those who wrote the hymns.

I can lose myself for hours jumping from one free song to another. There are some hymns that are not included because of copyright restriction (list), but otherwise, they have quite a thorough list of Christian (mainly Protestant) hymns.

For Thanksgiving, you may want "We Gather Together," which is available for free (here). From that page, you can hear the music of the hymn, read the words, and learn that -

This song of praise was originally written in 1597 to celebrate a Dutch victory. It appeared in Nederandtsche Gedenckclanck, by Adrianus Valerius (Haarlem, Holland: 1626) (Wilt heden nu treden).

Arranged & translated from Dutch to Latin by Eduard Kremser in Sechs Altniederländische Volkslieder (Leipzig, Germany: 1877). Translated from German to English by Theodore Baker, 1894.

You can also download the score in .nwc format, for which you can download a free viewer (here) so that you can view or print the scores of these free songs. Think how useful and economical that can be for a church or choral group.

You can also download and play the MIDI (audio) files on your computer. If you want to convert them to .wav files so that you can play them on a regular CD player, you will need to download either the free TiMidity++ program (here) or Audacity (here).

You can have some (respectful) fun with this site. Many hymns are set to tunes that do not have an exactly spotless religious background. For instance, have you ever sung the old drinking song "How Dry I Am" in church? If you say no, then go here.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom you can learn more about here and whom we rarely think of as a composer (although he wrote two operas) or as a figure who might be associated with a hymnal (he denied the doctrine of original sin), is associated with at least one hymn tune. Nethymnal acknowledges that hymn, but, perhaps because of his beliefs, omits a biography. You can listen to Rousseau's hymn tune here, and you will be forgiven for thinking of your aunt's loss of an elderly waterfowl.

Trinity Concerts at One

This archive of concert videos (here) combines in one source the religious and nationalist background of Thanksgiving as well as my taste in classical music, the "Trinity Concerts at One." This is a series of free, mainly classical concerts held at one o'clock on Thursdays at New York City's Trinity Church, at the corner Wall Street and Broadway (website; Wikipedia). Trinity as a parish dates to 1696, its current building to 1846.

On most Thursdays, people in the area can enjoy an hour concert that sends them back to their offices rejuvenated for the afternoon. Although most of the performances are classical, not all are. The concerts are broadcast live over the Internet, and then the church maintains recent videos in this online archive. The setting of the beautiful old church building enhances the free music.

I have tried to download some of the videos with no luck, but you can enjoy this free music with video online. Again, using the free Audacity program (which you can download here), you can record the audio.

You may enjoy these articles of mine -

"Thanksgiving: Free Movies to Make Thanksgiving Special" - read it
"Thanksgiving: Free Old Time Radio for a World War II Thanksgiving" - read it
"Thanksgiving: Free Audiobooks and Free Books to Enhance Thanksgiving" - read it
"How to Make a Free Conference Call at Thanksgiving - or Any Day" - read it
"How to Find Free Online Stuffing for Thanksgiving - No Money, No Calories!" - read it

I have also written a variety of articles about music, on people from Johnny Cash (here) to Olivier Messiaen (here), on musical instruments from the theremin (here) to the didgeridoo (here). Check my AC source page (here) to see the range of topics I write about.