Phillips Brooks and Lewis H. Redner · Key of G · Public domain
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This chart is written in G. Tap any key above the chart to see the whole song in that key, with every chord already worked out. To stay in G with different chord shapes, play it capo 3 with the E shapes, or capo 5 with the D shapes, or capo 7 with the C shapes. Singing with a group? Pick the key where the highest note is comfortable for everyone, then print that page.
Phillips Brooks was the rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia when he traveled to the Holy Land in 1865 and rode on horseback from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Three years later he turned the memory into a poem for the children of his Sunday school, and asked the church's organist, Lewis Redner, to write a tune for it.
Redner left it to the last minute. By his own account the melody came to him in the night before the Christmas service, and he wrote out the harmony that morning; he always called it a gift from heaven. The tune, named St. Louis, is the one sung across North America. In Britain the same words usually go to Forest Green, an English folk melody adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1906. Brooks's words and Redner's music are both in the public domain.
This one has more color than most carols, and that is the charm of it. The first four lines stay close to home on G, Am, and D7, with one surprise: an E7 on "deep and" that leans into the Am. The fifth and sixth lines are the heart of the song, where the harmony turns toward E minor through B7 for "dark streets shineth" and "everlasting light." Then the last two lines return to G as if nothing had happened. Play it slowly in a gentle four, one strum per chord where the changes sit close together. All eight chords are open shapes.
G · Am · D7 · E7 · D · B7 · Em · C
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
Another quiet one: Away in a Manger chords and lyrics
All the Christmas carol chord sheets, each one in every key.
Further reading: O Little Town of Bethlehem at Hymnary.org (texts, tunes, and history)
