Folk song O Come, O Come Emmanuel is one of 12 string quartet arrangements for intermediate strings included in Richard Young's Comprehensive String Pedagogy & Curriculum. A portion of the proceeds of sales for all CSPC music goes to support free music education at The People's Music School.

This piece is an unusually effective “quartet etude” for intonation. Musicians of all levels are tempted to base their intonation on the melody that is usually in the uppermost voice. More difficult is to “listen down” to the instrument (usually the cello) that is playing the bass line. In most top professional string quartets, the cello accompanies the 1st violin in a most sensitive manner, providing a stable harmonic framework. Naturally the 2nd violin and viola are influenced in many ways by the 1st violin’s melody. But most of the time they adjust their intonation to the cello’s bass line.
 When there are unisons, the players must decide who is “leading” and who is “following.” The “follower” keeps a “soft hand” that is always ready to adjust to the nuances of the “leader’s” intonation, even if he/she does not necessarily agree with it. One of the axioms of string quartet playing is that it is better to “sound like one” than for one player to be “correct.” Intonation is relative, not absolute. And to a large degree it is subjective. The players should therefore do everything possible to achieve a unified and homogenous result.
 -Richard Young

Full program notes are included with the score. There are fingerings and bowings in all the string parts of every one of CSPC's pieces. These "cooked-in" technical solutions target the particular levels of the students. They are not just pragmatic but "musical."

Please note that due to a loss of source files, the PDF files of the music have been generated from scanned copies of printed parts. While every effort has been made to produce high quality parts, the limitations of scanning will result in some degradation of print quality.