It came upon the midnight clear
It came upon the midnight clear (NOBC 103) was written and published in 1849 as a poem by American Edmund Sears, who was a Unitarian minister in Boston, Massachusetts. It was paired to a tune by Richard Storrs Willis, a musician originally from Boston but who moved to New York to be a music critic. The carol with its new tune was published in the Methodist Hymnal in 1878 and the carol is sung in America to that tune today. Arthur Sullivan1 adapted a folk tune drawn from the Dives and Lazarus tradition and that version, published in Church Hymns with Tunes in 1874 (London: S.P.C.K.) is what is sung in England.
1By 1874 Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was a budding composer, who was appointed professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music in 1866. His collaboration with W.S. Gilbert in comic operas began with ‘Trial by Jury’ in 1875.