Hark The Herald Angels
Hark the Herald Angels sing: Roud 8337: NOBC 92: This carol was composed in 1739 as a poem by the Methodist Charles Wesley (1707-88) with a first line ‘Hark how all the welkin rings!’ (welkin is an Old English word meaning ‘sky or vault of heaven’). It was Wesley’s fellow Methodist George Whitefield who altered it to ‘Hark! the herald angels sing’ in 1753.1
Wesley envisioned the hymn to be sung to the same tune as his Easter hymn Christ the Lord is risen today, but various musical settings were tried instead, until eventually in 1855 the organist William Cummings borrowed a melody from Felix Mendelssohn’s cantata Festgegang (a secular piece written in 1840) and grafted it onto the carol, adding the now familiar two-line chorus to fit the music.2 The carol in its new format appeared in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861 (no.60) and then in The English Hymnal in 1906 (no.24).
The carol is included here as a ‘folk-carol’, because for over 100 years it had been a poem in search of a melody and into that vacuum jumped many an anonymous local musician, often of the artisan class. Broadside printers across the country published texts of the carol, particularly in the first half of the 19th century.3 Tunes and arrangements for country choirs were written at that time and have now been recovered:
- at Padstow in Cornwall ‘Harkey, Harkey’ is currently sung each year in 4-part harmony, composer unknown.4
- in Sheffield, South Yorkshire the tune ‘Little Bilberry’ was set to the ‘Hark’ text.5
- versions of ‘Hark’ are sung at Eyam and nearby locality in the Peak District of Derbyshire6
- in Dorset Thomas Hardy had a tune for ‘Hark’ in his carol book7 and other ‘West Gallery’ arrangements can be found elsewhere…
Collectors like Cecil Sharp did not find any individual singers with unique tunes for ‘Hark’ in their era, largely because the Mendelssohn tune had become so ingrained that the carol was no longer bouncing around the folk circuit. But Janet Blunt did interview 79-year old William Walton at Adderbury, Oxon in 1916; a former morris dancer and church choir member, he recalled most of a four-part setting of Hark the herald angels which had been sung ‘60 or 70 years ago…until Mendelssohn’s air replaced it’.8
Footnotes
1 Whitefield, George, Hymns for Social Worship (London, 1753). Wesley’s original ten 4-line stanzas were reduced to eight stanzas at this point but there was as yet no refrain. Martin Madan then compressed the poem into the 8-line stanzas we sing today: A Collection of Psalm and Hymn tunes (London 1769).
2 Cummings’ arrangement was published in 1855 in London by J.J.Ewer. Mendelssohn died in 1847 and might not have given permission for Cummings to borrow his tune, which he said ‘should never be used with sacred words’.
3 The book known as ‘Douce adds. 137’ at the Bodleian Library has examples by: Bloomer, printer of Birmingham (p25); and by Croshaw of York (p51). Francis Douce, British antiquarian, donated his broadside collection to the Bodleian in his will in 1834. Other ‘Hark’ broadsides at the Bodleian are in the Harding collection: Pitts of London ref B7 (42) and Keys of Devonport B7 (5). Walter Harding, an American pianist and collector, donated his collection in 1950.
4 Worden, John Strike Sound (1971 p5)
5 Russell, Ian The Sheffield Book of Carols p86, as sung by Kate Rusby The Frost is all over CD, 2015.
6 Russell, Ian Derbyshire Book of Carols (2012 pp69, 114, 143).
7 Thomas Hardy carol book: copy at vwml: Vol.acc.no.5175 item 32: ‘dated 1799 Puddletown’.
8 Janet Blunt archive at vwml (JHB/11/7A,B). Dave Townsend’s setting of this ‘Newton’s Double’ tune is in his Oxfordshire Carols book (Serpent Press 2013 pp36,37). Blunt’s and Walton’s profiles are at www.cecilsharpspeople.org website.