It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

The writer. Sears was born in 1810 at Sandisfield, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and studied at Union College in Schenectady and at the divinity school in Cambridge ^[15][17]. He served Unitarian churches at Wayland and Lancaster until ill health ended his full parish work in 1847, and he went back to Wayland ^[16][18]. Though a Unitarian, he held, as F. M. Bird put it in Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, views closer to Swedenborg's, and always the divinity of Christ ^[15][14][20]. He already had one Christmas hymn in print, "Calm on the listening ear of night"; Julian's Dictionary traced it to a Boston paper of 1834, and a hymnal of 1874 dates it 1835 ^[15][4].

The words, 1849. In December 1849 Sears sent a second Christmas hymn to John H. Morison, who was then editing the Christian Register ^[1][7][11]. Delighted, Morison says, he read it aloud at a Christmas celebration of "Dr. Lunt's Sunday school in Quincy" before it was printed. Years later he wrote that however poor his own Christmas sermon might be, "the reading and singing of this hymn are enough to make up for all deficiencies" ^[7][11].

The Register printed it in volume 28, number 52, on page 206 ^[1][13]. The page shows five stanzas of eight lines under the heading "CHRISTMAS CAROLS.", with no music, signed only with the initials "E. H. S." ^[1][11]. Above it, the editor praised Sears's earlier hymn as if it had caught the anthem sung over Bethlehem, and wrote that little in his few months as editor had pleased him more than receiving "the following verses from the same writer" ^[1].

Myth and record. Often told: Sears wrote the carol as an answer to the Mexican-American War, or his parishioners first sang it at his home on Christmas Eve. What the record shows: an essay the Wayland Museum reprints from UU World calls the war link a long-held assumption and says nobody knows where the carol was first performed ^[18]. The earliest account of it in use is Morison's: a reading in Quincy, not a singing in Wayland ^[7][13]. The dates do show the world it was written into: the United States had ended its war with Mexico in 1848, revolutions had run through Europe that same year, and the Civil War lay about a dozen years ahead ^[11][19][20].

The tune, 1850. Richard Storrs Willis was born in Boston in 1819 and graduated from Yale in 1841 ^[9][8][10]. He studied music in Germany for over six years, spending a summer with Felix Mendelssohn, who looked over some of his compositions ^[9][10]. In 1850 he published Church Chorals and Choir Studies ^[9][2]. Its preface says the "choir studies" were tunes for choir practice, for church and for singing at home ^[2][11]. On page 93, Study No. 23 sets Philip Doddridge's "See Israel's gentle shepherd stand" in common meter ^[2]. It holds roughly the first half of the melody we now call CAROL ^[11][2].

How tune and words met. By 1869 the melody had grown to its full double length. Hymns of the Church with Tunes, published in New York that year, prints it as PIERCE, in four parts, for "While shepherds watched their flocks by night" ^[3][11]. The earliest known printing of the tune with Sears's words came in 1874, in Hymns and Songs of Praise, also from New York. There it is No. 158, "Christmas Carol", under the tune name "CAROL. C. M." and Willis's name, with all five stanzas in a lightly revised wording; this book sets it in 6/8 time in B-flat, and dates the words 1850 ^[4][11]. Hymnary.org gives 1878 for the first pairing, but the 1874 page is older ^[20][4].

Britain, 1874. That same year in London, Church Hymns with Tunes, the music edited by Arthur Sullivan, set the words to a new tune, NOEL, marked "Traditional Air rearranged" ^[5][22]. Hymnology Archive and Hymnary.org both link the old air to the folk carol "Dives and Lazarus"; Hymnology Archive finds that Sullivan wrote its third phrase himself, making a tune about twice as long as the folk one ^[11][22].

Sears's own last word. In 1875 Sears reprinted the carol in Sermons and Songs of the Christian Life. Its wording differs from the 1849 page in four places, all already in print in the New York hymnal of 1874 ^[6][4]. He died at Weston, Massachusetts, in January 1876 ^[15][17].

The poem has no manger and no shepherds; its subject is what the angels' song means for the world now ^[1][20].

Stanza 1. At midnight, long ago, angels leaned down toward the earth with their golden harps and sang the song of Luke's Gospel, "on earth peace, good will toward men", and the world lay still to listen ^[29][1].

Stanza 2. The song has not stopped. The angels still come through the "cloven" (split open) skies, wings spread, and their music still floats over a weary world. "Babel sounds" are the world's confused noise, after the tower in Genesis where the languages of the earth were confounded ^[29]. Over that din, the angels sing on.

Stanza 3. This is the war stanza. For two thousand years since that night, people have gone on doing wrong under the "angel-strain" (the angels' melody), and "man, at war with man" cannot hear the song of love they bring. The last lines are a plea: hush the noise, you who fight, and listen ^[1].

Stanza 4. Now the poem turns to the worn out: people bent under "life's crushing load", climbing a hard road with "painful steps and slow". Better hours are coming fast, so rest by the road and hear the angels. The British Methodist notes on the carol read this stanza as meant for enslaved people and the poor as well as the weary ^[19].

Stanza 5. The days the "prophet bards" (the prophets, heard as poets) foretold are on their way, when the turning years bring back the "age of gold", the golden age of the old poets. Peace will spread over the whole earth, and the world will sing back the song the angels sing now. Hymnology Archive points to prophecies such as Isaiah's, of nations beating their swords into ploughshares ^[11][29]. Some editors found the golden age unscriptural and altered or dropped the stanza, as the London book of 1874 and our Boston book of 1916 did ^[11][5][12].

It is sung at Christmas. Its meter is common meter doubled, 8.6.8.6 D, which British books call D.C.M., double common metre ^[20][5][19].

American books use Willis's CAROL: The United Methodist Hymnal has it at No. 218, in B-flat ^[23]. British books use Sullivan's NOEL: the Church of Scotland's Church Hymnary (fourth edition) at No. 303, in F, and the British Methodists' Singing the Faith at No. 205 ^[26][19]. The Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1982 prints both, No. 89 to CAROL and No. 90 to NOEL ^[24][25].

Most hymnals print four of the five stanzas. Hymnary.org finds the war stanza the one most often dropped; the British Methodists' Singing the Faith, like Hymns & Psalms before it, drops the fourth ^[20][19].

Our arrangement is read from Willis's four parts as Charles L. Hutchins printed them in Carols Old and Carols New (Boston, 1916), Carol 607, p. 491, in B-flat and 6/8 as printed ^[12]. The soprano sings Willis's tune, the lower parts are adapted for beginners, and it is for 2 to 4 singers. We sing verses 1 to 3 of the four Hutchins prints, which are Sears's stanzas 1, 2 and 4; Hutchins begins the third "O ye" where Sears has "And ye", and prints no war stanza. We leave out his verse 4, a rewrite of Sears's fifth that hopes for the day "the new heaven and earth shall own / The Prince of Peace their King" ^[12][1].

Sullivan's 1874 book, which brought in NOEL, also changed the words: "The words of peace they bring" in the third stanza, a new fourth stanza addressed to the "Prince of Peace", and no fifth ^[5]. Some recent books print the first line as "It came upon a midnight clear", among them Hymnal: A Worship Book (1992) and Voices Together (2020) ^[27][28].

• Soprano: Willis's tune, most often on F, then G. Lines 1, 3 and 7 of each verse leap from F to the top D on their second word ("It came", "From an-", "The world"); line 5 starts on that D, drops an octave to the low D ("the earth,", "its sad", "for glad") and climbs back by step to B-flat.
• Alto: under the tune, most often on D, then E-flat. Its top A comes only at the end of each verse's second line ("old,", "furl'd:", "low,") and its low A only at the end of the sixth ("King;", "wing,", "wing:"); after the F-sharp of "Peace on" it holds D while the tune falls an octave and climbs back.
• Tenor: the middle of the chord, always below the alto, most often on B-flat, then F. In the first and third lines of each verse it creeps up F, F-sharp, G, A, B-flat ("came upon the mid-"), then drops back to F for "night clear,".
• Bass: the bass line, most often on B-flat, then F. Its low F comes only on the pickup to lines 3 and 7 ("From", "The"; "And", "And"; "Who", "O"), its top G only in the second line ("rious song", "ful wings", "are bend-"), and under "Peace on the earth," it holds D.