Hark the Herald Angels Sing
The Classic Christmas Hymn by Charles Wesley
The popular Christmas carol Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is the result of a series of unintended events. A series of events that resulted in a hymn sung around the world.
The hymn Hark! The Herald Angels Sing has changed from the original draft. The tune was different than the one we are familiar with today and a small change in the words resulted in the familiar carol we know today. If the words had remained as Charles Wesley had written them, the hymn might not have achieved the popularity it has today.
The song we have to day is a compilation of the efforts of Charles Wesley, George Whitfield. Felix Mendelssohn, and W.H. Cummings.
Unintended Changes
The melody for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing as we know it today is an adaptation of music written by Felix Mendelssohn. The melody was part of a piece of music commemorating Johan Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. It was common for those who wrote hymns or other such music to adapt a popular tune or a classical piece to suit the needs of their song. Mendelssohn commented that he did not believe this music would be suitable for a hymn or for use in a church.
Charles Wesley the author of the hymn is well known for many of the Methodist hymns he wrote during his lifetime “each one packed with doctrine, all of them exhibiting strength and sensitivity both beauty and theological brawn.” (Morgan, 49) He was very temperamental about his work. He insisted that people not change what he had written. In fact, he prefaced one of his hymnals with the following warning:
“I beg leave to mention a thought which has been long upon my mind, and which I should long ago have inserted in the public papers, had I not been unwilling to stir up a nest of hornets. Many gentlemen have done my brother and me (though without naming us) the honor to reprint many of our hymns. Now they are perfectly welcome to do so, provided they print them just as they are. But I desire they would not attempt to mend them, for they are really not able. None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse. Therefore, I must beg of them these two favors: either to let them stand just as they are, to take things for better or worse, or to add the true reading in the margin, or at the bottom of the page, that we may no longer be accountable for the nonsense or for the doggerel of other men.” (Morgan, 49)
It is fortunate for us that Wesley’s friend George Whitfield disregarded his friend’s warning. When Wesley wrote the hymn, the first two lines began “Hark, how the welkin rings, Glory to the King of kings.” Welkin was an old English word meaning “the vault of heaven.” Whitfield changed the lines to the now familiar “Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.”
Later an organist named W.H. Cummings made the inspired adaptation of Mendelssohn’s music to fit the words of Wesley’s hymn. He organized the song into the ten-line stanzas that are sung today. The final version was published in 1856.
Sources
Reynolds, Virginia. The Spirit of Christmas: A History of Best-Loved Carols. Peter Pauper Press, Inc. 2000.
Morgan, Robert J. Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories. Thomas Nelson Publishers. 2003.
