"Joyful - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" genre: Christmas
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	Instrumental by Steve W. Smith. Felix Mendelssohn composed the energetic tune to which we now sing "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" in 1840. "Hark, how all the welkin (heaven) rings" was how Wesley wrote the line.
	MP3.com CD: The Sound Of Christmas Vol. 1 - buy it! CD: The Sound Of Christmas   Label: Sted Records Credits: Produced by: Ed Davis & Steve W. Smith ASCAP A&R Direction: Ed Davis Manufactured & Distributed by Sted Records
	Story Behind the Song Words by Charles Wesley. Music by Felix Mendelssohn. Copyright (C) 1981 Ardee Music Publishing, Inc. This arrangement by Steve W. Smith ASCAP Copyright 2002 by Sted Records Music. About This Song: Felix Mendelssohn composed the energetic tune to which we now sing "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" in 1840 as part of a cantata commemorating printer Johann Gutenberg. Fifteen years later an English musician, W. H. Cummings, applied Mendelssohn's musical phrases to a hymn written in 1739 by Charles Wesley. ("Hark, how all the welkin (heaven) rings" was how Wesley wrote the line; fortunately, a colleague substituted the opening line we know and sing today.) The devout Wesley, the Poet Laureate of Methodism, composed about 6,500 hymns in the course of his life. He and his equally devout brother John, who founded Methodism in England, might have been dismayed by the sprightly character of the music, but their text would have pleased Mendelssohn, who always felt that his tune deserved a "merry subject."

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