- Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is a
Christmas hymn or carol written byCharles Wesley , the brother ofJohn Wesley . It first appeared in "Hymns and Sacred Poems" in 1739. The original opening couplet was "Hark! how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings". The version known today is the result of alterations by various hands, most notablyGeorge Whitfield , Wesley's co-worker, who changed the opening couplet to the familiar one we know today.One of the tunes originally used for the carol was also used as a tune for "
Amazing Grace ".fact|date=July 2008 Wesley himself, however, envisaged his lyrics sung to the same tune as his Easter hymn, "Christ the Lord is Risen Today."fact|date=July 2008The tune that is now almost always used for this carol is based on a chorus composed by
Felix Mendelssohn in 1840, part of hiscantata "Festgesang an die Künstler " ("Festival Song") to commemorate the printerJohann Gutenberg and the invention of hisprinting press . The cantata was first presented at the great festival held atLeipzig . "Festgesang"'s second chorus, "Vaterland, in deinem Gauen", was adapted in 1855 byWilliam Hayman Cummings . Mendelssohn said of the song that it could be used with many different choruses but that it should not be used forsacred music . This may be because the melodic and harmonic structure of the tune are similar to theGavotte of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 4; indeed Mendelssohn (who has always been linked with the music of Bach) may simply have adapted Bach's music for his chorus, as was proposed by Nigel Poole with his (transposed) arrangement of the Gavotte as "Bach's Christmas Carol" [ [http://www.websights.org/bachcarol/ Bach's Carol ] ] .Performance
In the UK at least "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" has popularly been performed in an arrangement that maintains the basic original
William Hayman Cummings harmonisation of the Mendelssohn tune for the first two verses but adds asoprano descant and alast verse harmonisation for the organ in verse 3 by SirDavid Willcocks . This arrangement was first published in 1961 byOxford University Press in the first book of theCarols for Choirs series.For many years it has served as the
recessional hymn of the annual Service ofNine Lessons and Carols inKing's College Chapel, Cambridge . [cite web|url=http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/ninelessons/index.html|title=Nine Lessons and Carols|publisher=King's College, Cambridge |accessdate=2007-10-25 Includes orders of service going back to 1997.]In popular culture
* "
A Charlie Brown Christmas " - book version altered "Offspring of a Virgin's womb" by "Finding here his humble home"fact|date=August 2008
*Bee Gees - as part of a medley with Silent Nightfact|date=August 2008References
External link
* Free sheet music for [http://cantorion.org/music/431/Hark%21%20The%20Herald%20Angels%20Sing voice] and [http://cantorion.org/music/148/Hark%21%20The%20Herald%20Angels%20Sing SATB] from "Cantorion.org"
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