Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

I always misunderstood this as a kid and thought it was about an angel called Hark singing...

The words were written by Charles Wesley as a hymn specifically for Christmas day and he wanted slow and solemn music for it. The words have been changed about since - George Whitfield changed the opening couplet a bit and then the repetition of "Hark! The herald-angels sing "Glory to the new-born king"" at the end of each verse was added later. The words we sing today are also slightly different than the Wesley and Whitfield versions and we only sing the first three verses.

Wikipedia has all three versions side by side

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hark!_The_Herald_Angels_Sing

The tune comes from a Felix Mendelssohn piece which was adapted to fit the words by William H Cummings. I always feel sorry for the tenors singing this piece - not very imaginative writing!

Hope you enjoy