The Heat Wave
July 1946. It is unusually hot in Woodbury, Connecticut, suffering from a heat wave and a drought. A thirty-eight-year-old man is outside digging a trench, hunting down an old hidden pipe that runs from a spring, yet he is hearing sleigh bells. The rhythm of the piece arrives while he is in the dirt next to the family cottage, where he is staying for the summer with his wife and young daughter. However, this is not a summer retreat, as the postwar housing shortage forced him to temporarily live on this property owned by his mother-in-law as her retirement lot. He just made a terrifying bet by declining a promising diplomatic career to write music, and has nothing yet to show for it. Imagining wintry sleigh bells is a welcome distraction while performing manual labor for the overheated man. He keeps digging, and the bells keep ringing.
The Harvard-Trained Army Captain
Leroy (pronounced Luh-ROY, not LEE-Roy) Anderson (1908-1975) was introduced to music at an early age thanks to his mother who was a church organist and his father who played banjo and mandolin. He received elite compositional training from esteemed American composer Walter Piston while attending Harvard University. Piston wrote core foundational music textbooks on harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration that are still in use today, and he imparted his rigorous structural integrity to Anderson, who would employ this in his seemingly “light” concert pieces. In addition to his musical abilities, Anderson was a genuine linguistic prodigy and was fluent in many languages. These language skills were crucial in his time with the U.S. Army during World War II, where he served as the Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence.
Musical Onomatopoeia
Anderson began work on “Sleigh Ride” during the heat wave of July 1946, but he did not finish the work until February 10, 1948 in Brooklyn, NY. He was building on the musical tradition of programmatic winter pieces in classical music incorporating sleigh bells which spans back to at least the 1750s. For hundreds of years, sleigh bells have been attached to sleighs for safety reasons as an early audible warning system to pedestrians. Over many generations, the sound of the sleigh bell became inextricably linked to the sensory and emotional experience of winter travel.
Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang’s father), wrote “Die musikalische Schlittenfahrt” (“The Musical Sleigh-Ride”) in 1755 as one of the earliest examples of orchestral onomatopoeia, which is literal sound-painting where the music imitates real-world sounds. This groundbreaking piece incorporated sleigh bells, horse hooves, and a whip to evoke a winter’s journey. Wolfgang followed in his father’s example, using sleigh bells in the third of his Three German Dances in 1791. Two other prominent works with sleigh bells include Frederick Delius’s “Winter Night,” commonly known as “Sleigh Ride” from the second movement of Three Small Tone Poems of 1890, and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Troika” from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite of 1934.
Building the Ride
Anderson brings his musical architecture pedigree to “Sleigh Ride,” as he fits a moderately complex seven-part rondo form (ABACABA) into less than three minutes of music. The A section keeps coming back around like the sleigh ride itself, providing the primary melodic theme. The contrasting B section represents the first material Anderson initially sketched for the work in the sweltering heat of 1946. He wrote this section first but did not feel it was strong enough to start the work, and he later reverse-engineered the rest of the piece around this initial section by building the other parts around it. The middle C section introduces the crack of the whip, and Anderson employs a hint of jazz in the second half of the piece as the energy accelerates towards its exciting conclusion. There are sleigh bells in the score throughout of course, along with temple blocks for the horse’s hooves, and a glockenspiel to bring more bright texture to the music.
As a former orchestral percussionist, I have performed “Sleigh Ride” with an orchestra many times, and I’ve played all of the percussion parts of the score. My favorite part to play by far is the temple blocks that make the horse’s clip-clop sounds throughout, which to me is one of the most fun percussion parts in the entire orchestral repertoire. I’ve seen the wonder in a child’s eyes when hearing the horse’s hooves galloping along for the first time in concert. Playing the whip part is cathartic as well, and this is played on a slapstick which is two wood boards joined together by a hinge that are slapped together.
Anderson’s signature wit is on full display in “Sleigh Ride,” as the music is both playful and surprising, like a well-constructed musical joke. But if a listener has ever heard “Sleigh Ride” before, they are anxiously waiting for just one thing at the very end; the infamous horse whinny that concludes the punchline. It takes an unusual technique to play the whinny, as the trumpeter usually presses the valves down half-way, and performs a glissando while shaking the horn. It can be a trumpeter’s favorite and most terrifying moment of the piece.
Anderson envisioned the work as a general description of winter versus the Christmas designation it was later given. After he finished “Sleigh Ride” in February 1948, it was first performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra under conductor Arthur Fiedler in May 1948 as an extra piece at the end of the concert. The Boston Pops recorded the piece in 1949, and it quickly became synonymous with the Christmas season. The recording also peaked at 24 on Billboard’s Best-Selling Pop Singles chart in December 1949, an extraordinary accomplishment for a purely orchestral piece with no direct Christmas references. Anderson’s wife, Eleanor, recalls hearing “Sleigh Ride” playing in New York City department stores throughout the holiday shopping season of 1949, cementing its status as a Christmas icon. A work begun in the summer and first performed in the spring became one of the biggest Christmas hits of all time.
The Words Came Later
Mills Music was impressed by the success of Fiedler’s recording and wagered that “Sleigh Ride” would become an even greater hit by adding vocal lyrics. It commissioned Tin Pan Alley legend Mitchell Parish to create the lyrics for Anderson’s work. Parish was well-known for his skills at creating a lyrical narrative to an already finished instrumental with songs such as “Stardust” and “Moonlight Serenade.” His words to Anderson’s piece describe the joys of a sleigh ride in a snow wonderland, and they compare the scene to a Currier and Ives print. The lyrics also reference a birthday party, but not a Christmas party. In fact, there is no mention of Santa Claus, no nativity scene, or any other distinctively Christmas content included in the lyrics.
The popular Andrews Sisters recorded “Sleigh Ride” with the new lyrics in 1950, incorporating their signature harmony that suited the work’s kinetic energy. Other artists, such as the Ames Brothers and Perry Como also recorded the song in the 1950s. The closest “Sleigh Ride” would ever become to being a number one Billboard hit would be with The Ronettes recording from 1963 produced by Phil Spector. The album which included this recording, A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, featured a mix of artists singing various Christmas songs, and it had the tragic history of releasing on November 22, 1963, the same day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The album had limited success during its initial run as the country was in mourning, but it became more popular after its re-release in 1972 and debuted in the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2018. After multiple years of climbing higher in the charts, “Sleigh Ride” by The Ronettes rose to its highest ever peak at No. 8 in December 2023, sixty years after its initial release.
The Invented Winter
Leroy Anderson, the man digging outside in a brutal heat wave in 1946, invented a picturesque musical winter scene while drenched in sweat. He had no basis for the music except the title itself. Although his compositional intent was to create a general winter piece, through commercial branding and popular demand, Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” became one of the most recognizable Christmas standards in the repertoire. Anderson’s version of winter belongs to no one, which is how it came to belong to everyone: the shoppers in 1949, the trumpeter waiting for the end of the piece, the children hearing the horse’s hooves for the first time.
A piece with no Christmas in it became a fixture of the season anyway.
Sources and Further Reading
Leroy Anderson: A Bio-Bibliography by Burgess Speed, Eleanor Anderson, and Steve Metcalf. A biography on the life and work of Leroy Anderson with his wife Eleanor as one of the authors.
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops by Harry Ellis Dickson. A look at the long career of conductor Fiedler and his work with the Boston Pops Orchestra.
The Leroy Anderson Foundation Website (www.leroyandersonfoundation.org). The Leroy Anderson Foundation was created by Anderson’s wife, Eleanor, and the website honors the musical legacy of Leroy Anderson.
Listen Along – Recommended Playlist
Listen to “Sleigh Ride” performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler, as well as a recording with Leroy Anderson conducting, along with “Sleigh Ride” recordings with lyrics including The Ronettes, the Andrews Sisters, and Pentatonix. Also, listen to the sleigh bell predecessors including Leopold Mozart’s “Musical Sleigh Ride,” Wolfgang Mozart’s “Sleigh Ride,” Frederick Delius’s “Winter Night,” and Sergei Prokofiev’s “Troika” from the Lieutenant Kijé Suite.
Love this and ALWAYS have love Sleigh Ride! Outstanding!!!