O Little Town of Bethlehem

Bethlehem, 1865. In August 1865 Phillips Brooks, the rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, left for a year abroad ^[2][1][3]. On Sunday, 24 December, he rode from Jerusalem to Bethlehem ^[1]. Writing home on 30 December, he described a good-looking town on a ridge among terraced gardens, and a ride before dark to the field "where they say the shepherds saw the star" ^[1]. The service in the Church of the Nativity ran from about ten at night to three in the morning, and he found it long and tiring ^[1][14]. Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology (1907) puts the visit at Christmas 1866, but Brooks's letter is dated 1865 ^[15][1].

Two months later it looked different. Writing from Rome on 19 February 1866 to his Sunday-school children, he remembered standing "close to the spot where Jesus was born" while the church rang "hour after hour" with hymns, and hearing in them the voices of home ^[1][2].

The words, 1868. Brooks came home in September 1866 ^[2][3]. His brother Arthur told the hymnologist Louis F. Benson that the carol was not written until 1868 ^[3]. Brooks wrote it for the Christmas service of his Sunday school, and it was sung there for the first time at Christmas 1868 ^[3][2][15]. Benson printed facsimiles of two verses from Brooks's manuscript: the first stanza and the stanza later left out. He also printed the tune's opening line in Redner's own hand ^[3].

The tune, 1868. Redner was the church's organist and the Sunday school's superintendent ^[3][16]. Years later Redner wrote down for Benson how Brooks asked him for a tune as Christmas approached, and came to him on a Friday asking, "Redner, have you ground out that music yet?" Late on the Saturday night, he said, he woke "hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear", jotted down the melody, and filled in the harmony on Sunday morning before church. Neither man, he added, thought the carol would outlive that Christmas ^[3][12].

In print. Benson wrote that the carol was printed for the Sunday school's Christmas programme of 1868, its earliest known printing ^[3][2], and Redner remembered a Philadelphia bookseller, Richard McCauley, printing it on leaflets for sale ^[3][12]. Its earliest known printing in a book came in 1870, in the Sunday School Service and Hymn Book of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio ^[4][12]. There it is No. 63, under "Christmas Eve", with five stanzas and no author's name. It has no music of its own, only a line sending singers to two other books for a tune ^[4].

In 1874 William Reed Huntington, rector of All Saints' Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, printed words and tune together in his Sunday-school book The Church Porch ^[3][5]. Redner said it was Huntington who named the tune ST. LOUIS ^[3][12]. In 1892 the carol entered the official hymnal of Brooks's own church, the Episcopal Church's Hymnal of 1892, where it is No. 58 ^[3][11]. Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts from 1891, died on 23 January 1893 ^[3][13].

The other tune. In December 1903 Ralph Vaughan Williams noted down a folk tune from a singer named Mr. Garman at Forest Green, in Surrey. The Journal of the Folk-Song Society printed it in 1906 as "The Ploughboy's Dream" ^[8][12]. That year Vaughan Williams, the musical editor of The English Hymnal, set Brooks's words to it as No. 15, named FOREST GREEN and credited as an "English Traditional Melody" ^[9][12].

Brooks wrote five stanzas of eight lines ^[4][3]. American books have usually sung four since The Church Porch left out the fourth in 1874 ^[5][12]. Benson noted that until its last stanza the carol is not a prayer at all: the singer speaks to the town itself, and some hymnologists doubted it belonged in church for that reason ^[3].

Stanza 1. The singer looks down on Bethlehem asleep at night, with the stars moving silently overhead. The prophet Micah had called Bethlehem "little among the thousands of Judah", yet the place a ruler would come from ^[24]. The "everlasting Light" shining in its dark streets is Christ, the "true Light" of John's Gospel ^[24][12]. In the last two lines, everything people have longed for and dreaded through all of history meets in this one night.

Stanza 2. While the town sleeps, the angels, gathered above, keep watch in wonder. "O morning stars, together" recalls the Book of Job, where "the morning stars sang together" at the making of the world; the last lines echo the angels' song in Luke, "on earth peace" ^[24][12].

Stanza 3. The gift comes in silence. No one hears Christ arrive, but wherever a humble ("meek") person will take him in, he still comes in. Hymnology Archive suggests an echo of Revelation 3:20, "I stand at the door, and knock" ^[12][24].

The omitted stanza. Children pray, Misery cries out, Charity stands watching and Faith holds the door wide open, and Christmas comes again. In Brooks's manuscript, and in the Ohio book of 1870, its fourth line calls Christ "Son of the undefiled", the son of a pure, unstained mother ^[3][4]. Redner wrote that the line drew "some amusing criticism lest it should smack of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception", the Roman Catholic teaching that Mary was conceived free of original sin. Brooks changed it to "Son of the Mother mild", Redner said, and later dropped the stanza ^[3][23].

Stanza 4 as American books number it. Now the singer prays to the child: come down, drive out our sin, "be born in us to-day". "Emmanuel" is the name in Matthew's Gospel, "which being interpreted is, God with us" ^[24].

Brooks wrote it for children, and Benson thought that if Redner's tune had failed that Christmas, the carol would probably not have been reprinted or heard again in Brooks's lifetime ^[3][2].

Its meter is 8.6.8.6.7.6.8.6, which The English Hymnal calls "D.C.M. Words irreg.": double common meter, with shorter fifth lines ^[17][9].

The tune depends on the book. The United Methodist Hymnal (1989) sets it to ST. LOUIS ^[17]; the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 prints both, No. 78 to FOREST GREEN and No. 79 to ST. LOUIS ^[18][19]. The Church Hymnary (fourth edition), the Irish Presbyterian Hymnbook (2004) and the British Methodists' Singing the Faith (2011) use FOREST GREEN ^[20][21][22].

We sing ST. LOUIS in G as Hutchins printed it, Carol 599 on p. 484, checked against the Episcopal Church's Hymnal of 1916, No. 78, which has the same tune ^[6][7]. The Church Porch of 1874 differs in one note, B where they have D on "and" in "deep and dreamless", and in places in the alto and tenor ^[5][6][7]. Our arrangement is read from Redner's four parts as Hutchins prints them: verses 1, 3 and 4 of his four, for two to four singers, soprano and alto, then bass for three and tenor for four ^[6]. The soprano sings Redner's tune, unchanged but for breaths written in for beginners. His chords are kept, and the lower parts are adapted for beginners: one note to a syllable, the alto and tenor revoiced in places, and the bass an octave lower from "by;" to "Light;" to stay in a beginner's range, holding a low B under "The everlast-" where Redner doubles the tune in all four voices.

FOREST GREEN is the main other tune. In The English Hymnal it carries all five stanzas, with the fourth in its "Mother mild" form and the two halves of the second stanza swapped ^[9][10][12]. The Episcopal Hymnal of 1892 printed only words. Its rival musical editions wrote new tunes for the carol: one, edited by J. Ireland Tucker and W. W. Rousseau, gives two, by James C. Knox and W. H. Walter ^[11]. Benson wrote that they also drew attention afresh to Redner's tune ^[3].

• Soprano: the tune, most often on B. Its top E comes twice a verse, on "deep" and on "Are" ("parts" and "The", "sin," and "Our"), the second an octave leap up from the E on "years" after a quick breath; its low D comes only on "thee" ("is", "we"), before the leap up to B.
• Alto: mostly a sixth below the tune, most often on D, meeting the tune only on its low D ("thee", "is", "we"). Each third line climbs G, G-sharp, A to the top A on "dream-" ("hu-", "en-"); the low B comes on the second note of every even line and at the end of the fourth and last lines.
• Tenor: the middle of the chord, most often on G, then B, sharing the bass's G on "O little town of" and "The hopes and fears of". Its top E comes only on "and dream-" ("to hu-", "and en-"), and its low D only on the last note of each verse.
• Bass: the bass line, most often on G, high and low, then D. Each verse opens on the high G and ends its second line on the low G; from "by;" it stays low, climbing from G to B under "Yet in thy dark streets shineth" and holding that B, but for a C on the "-ing" of "everlasting", to "Light;".