Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

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Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is an English Christmas carol .

history

The main part of the text is from Charles Wesley ; it was published in 1739 in his collection Hymns and Sacred Poems . There the text begins with the line “Hark! How All The Welkin Rings / Glory To The King of Kings ”. George Whitefield , who worked with Wesley, later changed it to the current version.

First the lyrics were sung to the tune of Amazing Grace . Wesley himself used the same melody as for the Easter hymn Christ the Lord is Risen Today .

The current melody of the song goes back to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . It was originally part of the song for the Gutenberg Festival , which Mendelssohn composed in 1840 for the “fourth secular celebration of the invention of the art of printing” in Leipzig.

At the same time, the strong similarity of the melodic and harmonic structure of Mendelssohn's melody with JS Bach's Gavotte from the orchestral suite No. 4 suggests a possible adaptation by Mendelssohn.

In 1855, William Hayman Cummings adapted Mendelssohn's melody of the second choir, "Vaterland, in seine Gauen" (Fatherland, in your Gau), and underlaid it with Wesley's text, which appeared in 1861 as a counterfactor in a hymn book.

When the English publisher Edward Buxton asked Mendelssohn to be allowed to add a spiritual text to the Gutenberg cantata for a publication in England, he strictly refused.

The song became known worldwide through its use in the Peanuts special The Peanuts - Merry Christmas / A Charlie Brown Christmas from 1965 in a version by Vince Guaraldi .

The motivic similarity to Bach prompted the Australian Nigel Poole to arrange the "Gavotte", which he published as Bach's Christmas Carol for mixed choir and piano accompaniment. A German translation of the lyrics under the title Hear the song from heaven was created by Peter Maternus. In the free church area, the translation Our Savior is now also used by Johannes Haas . Another German translation by Johannes Jourdan under the title In das Warten der Welt has been included in the Limburg diocesan part of the Catholic hymn book Praise God (GL 749).

literature

  • Armin Koch: Chorales and chorales in the work of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (= treatise on music history, 12; also: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2001/02). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-27911-6 , pp. 164-165.
  • Ralph Larry Todd: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. His life, his music . Translated from the English by Helga Beste. Carus / Reclam, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-15-010677-8 , p. 437.

Web links

Wikisource: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.faithclipart.com/guide/Christian-Holidays/holiday-songs/hark-the-herald-angels-sing,-the-song-and-the-story.html
  2. ↑ Hark! The Herald Angels Sing . SongFacts. Retrieved December 28, 2011.
  3. ^ Hark the Herald Angels Sing carols.org.uk
  4. ^ Letter to Buxton, Leipzig, April 30, 1843; US-NHub Frederick R. Koch Collection; Reply to letter from Buxton, London, April 13, 1843, GB XVII-197.
  5. ^ William D. Crump: The Christmas Encyclopedia. 3rd edition, 2013 ISBN 9781476605739 , pp. 218f
  6. ↑ Bach's Christmas Carol. Archived from the original on June 29, 2008 ; Retrieved December 25, 2010 .
  7. ↑ Sheet music from Bach's Christmas Carol (Johann Sebastian Bach arr.Nigel Poole) in the Choral Public Domain Library - ChoralWiki (English)
  8. ↑ Hark! The Herald Angels Sing , Peter Tonger
  9. ↑ http://www.scm-shop.de/unser-heiland-ist-nun-da.html
  10. ↑ Praise to God. Edition for the Diocese of Limburg. Lahn-Verlag, Kevelaer 2013, ISBN 978-3-7840-0200-2 , p. 1019.
  11. ↑ Stefan Scholz, Andreas Boltz : song portrait “In the waiting of this world” GL 749 (PDF; 12.8 kB).