Back to: The Twelve Days of Christmas Carols
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” has an interesting history involving four creative minds over the span of two centuries. Charles Wesley wrote it in 1737, George Whitfield changed the first verse in 1753, Felix Mendelssohn wrote the music in 1840 as part of a cantata (“Festgesang zur Eröffnung der am ersten Tage der vierten Säcularfeier der Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst”), celebrating the 400th anniversary of the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg. But there is an important fourth individual!
The English musician William Hayman Cummings (1831-1915) accomplished a unique feat when in 1855 he married Whitefield’s adaptation of Wesley’s hymn to a melody by one of classical music’s most notable composers: none other than the great Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
Although neither Wesley nor Mendelssohn would probably have approved of this combination of lyric and melody, it now seems appropriate that the words of a man who lived to evangelize the world for Christ (Wesley) should be tied to a tribute written for a man who invented a method of mass-producing God’s Word for all to read.