The Little Drummer Boy

Katherine K. Davis, an interrupted nap, and a rhythm that would not leave her alone

The Nap

Concord, Massachusetts, 1941. A woman is trying to take a nap, but she keeps hearing an unusual melody in her head. She tries to go back to sleep, but the tune will just not leave her alone. A certain rhythm keeps repeating over and over, which mimics the sounds of a snare drum. The woman realizes she needs to get up and start writing this down. As she writes, the words and the music flow very easily, and the work comes together in a single sitting. She titles the piece “Carol of the Drum.”

Carol of the Drum

The woman trying to nap, Katherine Kennicott Davis, was a prolific composer who wrote hundreds of works, including hymns, cantatas, and operettas. She was awarded the Billings Prize for Musical Composition while attending Wellesley College, and she also studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, considered one of the most influential composition pedagogues of the twentieth century whose students include Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. Davis was an educator herself, and dedicated her professional life to the musical education of young women and children.

In “Carol of the Drum,” a recurring rhythmic pattern repeats in the melody. This “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum” figure is a musical form of onomatopoeia, where the singers imitate the sound of the Drummer Boy playing his drum. Another carol written over two hundred years earlier also includes instrumental imitation in the melody. “Patapan,” whose original title is “Guillò, Pran Ton Tamborin” or “Willie, Take Your Little Drum,” is a Burgundian French song likely written around 1700 which has two rhythmic patterns which are sung repeatedly throughout the piece. This song is also centered around musicians who perform for the newborn Jesus, with “tu-re-lu-re-lu” imitating the sound of the flute and “pat-ta-pa-ta-pan” imitating the sound of the drum.

The Rhythm of the Drum

The original scoring of “Carol of the Drum” is an a cappella SATB chorale, and the piano accompaniment which doubles the choir parts is “For rehearsal only.” It is a three-verse composition with a similar melody for each verse, but the genius of Davis is the rhythmic variation she brings to the tenor and bass parts in her 1941 setting. While the soprano and alto parts sing the simple yet hypnotic melody and harmony on top, the men provide the literal rhythmical drone underneath, starting with a simple “prum” on one and three as a bass drum and snare drum might provide in a military march. For the second verse, Davis adds more to the men’s voices, who now sing “Prum…pum, pum” together on beats one, three, and four, while the women’s voices sing a softer echo of the original first verse melody.

For the pivotal final verse, Davis ratchets up the rhythmic complexity. The basses switch to a “Prum, pum, pum” on beats one, two, and three, while the tenors now sing a different rhythm, “Prum, pum, pum, pup-pa,” which introduces eighth notes to their part and quickly transitions into a more exciting “Pum, pup-pa, pum, pup-pa” rhythm. As the soprano and alto head towards their climactic fortissimo on “Rum-pa-pum-pum,” the men switch from eighth notes to alternating fortissimo triplets on “Pud-dly-dy pum,” sounding like a full drum corps at their loudest and at the highest moment of rhythmic pressure. Another important musical work written just thirteen years before also incorporates a distinctive triplet figure throughout with a building rhythmic pressure.

Maurice Ravel’s “Boléro” is an orchestral piece written in 1928, in which the same two-measure snare drum ostinato which begins the work as a solo repeats throughout the approximately fifteen minute performance (depending on the tempo taken), without stopping until the very end. As a former orchestral percussionist, I have been lucky enough to play this part once before, and it is a challenging test in physical steadiness and mental focus. The two-measure ostinato is not difficult by itself, but to perform this phrase 169 times in a row without a single break, while maintaining impeccable timing as a human metronome for the rest of the orchestra, and also while executing a fifteen-minute-long crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo, is one of the most demanding percussion parts in the entire orchestral repertoire.

The New Title

For ten years, “Carol of the Drum” stayed quiet. The Trapp Family Singers then recorded the song in 1951. However, everything changed with the 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale, which caused the song’s popularity to explode. Harry Simeone changed the title to the now familiar “The Little Drummer Boy” for the recording, a title which Davis did not really care for. Simeone’s recording debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 that year, and it reached the Top 40 each year from 1958 through 1962. The strangest duet in Christmas television happened in 1977, when David Bowie and Bing Crosby sang “Peace on Earth / The Little Drummer Boy” together on Crosby’s final Christmas special, taped just a month before Crosby died.

I Played My Best For Him

Just as every note played by the snare drum in “Boléro” is exposed for all of the concert hall to hear, so was every note that the poor but proud Drummer Boy played for the baby Jesus. There is no drummer boy in any of the scripture Nativity scenes. The little drummer boy performing for Jesus in “Carol of the Drum” was invented by Davis, who built upon the tradition of the drummer boy and their role as a prominent historical figure across thousands of years. Since the ancient era, drummers, who were usually under military age, served as a crucial tactical necessity in organized warfare before the modern battlefield. This lone underage boy would direct hundreds, and sometimes thousands of soldiers in complicated maneuvers such as charging or retreating, while right in the middle of the dangerous crossfire of the battle. They were expected to maintain their composure and rhythmic precision as the men around them fell, and they also performed other critical roles such as carrying messages and rescuing wounded soldiers. Several drummer boys received the prestigious Medal of Honor during the Civil War, including Willie Johnston who was the youngest ever recipient in the award’s history, honored at thirteen for his actions during the Seven Days Battles in 1862, when Johnston was just eleven.

Davis’s drummer boy might have been around the same age or perhaps even younger, and he was not a rich king who could present an expensive offering such as gold or myrrh. He was a poor, solitary boy with no worthy gift to bring, other than his spirited performance on his drum. The boy asks to play his drum, Mary nods, and he plays the best he had ever played. The little drummer boy then receives the ultimate vindication of his musical gift, a smile from the baby Jesus.

Davis played her best for him, too.

Sources and Further Reading

Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encylopedia and Document Collection edited by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. This encyclopedia highlights the roles and contributions of women across American history.

“Christmas Carols, Drums, and Compound Musical Topics” by Esti Sheinberg. Min-Ad: Israel Studies in Musicology (Vol. 14, 2017). Explores “The Little Drummer Boy” in connection with historical background of drummer boys in the military and their cultural associations.

“Orchestral Tissue, Subordinate Arabesques, and Turning Inward in Maurice Ravel’s Boléro” by Gurminder K. Bhogal. Music Theory Online, 26(2). Reviews Ravel’s use of timbre and ostinato instead of traditional harmonic elements to build dramatic tension in his “Boléro.”

Listen Along - Recommended Playlist

Listen to the original choral version of “Carol of the Drum,” along with the recording by The Trapp Family Singers. Also, listen to the famous Harry Simeone Chorale recording of “The Little Drummer Boy,” along with the David Bowie/Bing Crosby duet of “Peace On Earth / The Little Drummer Boy.”