85. Hark the herald angels sing
Charles Wesley, 1707-88
One of the most popular English hymns. Julian listed four hymns as standing at the head of all in the English language: “When I survey” (105-6), “Rock of Ages” ([148]), “Awake my soul” ([25]), and this one.
It is taken from Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1739. The original had 10 four-line stanzas and no refrain. The hymn has been altered in various ways and improved. For example, the lines,
With the angelic host proclaim,
Christ is born in Bethlehem,
originally read
Universal nature say
Christ the Lord is born today.
And for our familiar first lines,
Hark! the herald angels sing!
Glory to the new-born King,
Wesley had
Hark! how all the welkin rings,
Glory to the King of Kings.
These, and other changes, disprove the common assertion that hymns should always be sung just as the authors left them. As a rule, however, it still remains true that “the professional hymn mender is an odious creature.”
For comments on Charles Wesley see [Hymn 6].
MUSIC. MENDELSSOHN, also called “Bethlehem” and “St. Vincent,” is from Mendelssohn’s Festgesang for Male Chorus and Orchestra, composed in 1840 to celebrate the invention of printing. The tune is adapted from chorus No. 2 of that work. Dr. W. H. Cummings, organist at Waltham Abbey, set the tune to the words of this hymn and had it sung by the Abbey Choir. It was so well received that he published it in 1856 and it has since found its way into the hymn books of all denominations.
It is interesting to note Mendelssohn’s own estimate of the tune, as he expressed it in a letter to his English publishers.
I am sure that piece will be liked very much by the singers and hearers, but it will never do to sacred words. There must be a national and merry subject found out, something to which the soldier-like and buxom motion of the piece has some relation, and the words must express something gay and popular as the music tries to do.