Let There Be Peace On Earth: A Song History

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"Let There Be Peace on Earth" is a modern song, not a traditional one: Jill Jackson wrote the words and her husband Sy Miller the melody in 1955, six years after the couple married and began writing songs together.[1] Its first singers were young people of many faiths, races and backgrounds gathered for a week-long retreat on friendship and understanding in the California mountains, where, as Miller later recalled, 180 teenagers sang it together.[1] The song is still under copyright, dating from 1955 and renewed in 1983, and is assigned to Jan-Lee Music; The United Methodist Hymnal names its tune WORLD PEACE.[2]

A white wax dove in flight carrying an olive sprig, on a dark slate disc

George Gammon Adams, Dove on the Wing with Olive Branch, wax on slate, ca. 1860. A dove with an olive branch, the old emblem of peace; it has no connection to the song.

The campers carried it back to their schools, churches and clubs, and by Miller's account it went on to be sung in all 50 states, at graduations, PTA meetings and Veterans Day and United Nations Day observances, by groups as different as 4-H, the Kiwanis, the American Legion and the Congress of Racial Equality.[1] C. Michael Hawn's history of the song for Discipleship Ministries lists recordings by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Pat Boone, Mahalia Jackson, Johnny Mathis and Plácido Domingo, and reports that the song won the Freedoms Foundation's George Washington Honor Medal and that the National Conference of Christians and Jews gave its writers the Brotherhood Award.[1] The United Methodist Hymnal of 1989 prints it as No. 431 in a harmonization by Charles H. Webb, and at the time of writing Hymnary.org indexes it in more than thirty hymnals, with French and Spanish translations.[2][3] In 2009 it became an illustrated picture book with art by David Diaz, and Kirkus notes that UNICEF has used it as a theme.[4] Butch Ross includes it in The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book, a Fingers Of Steel title that he publishes himself, offering lighthearted, unconventional dulcimer tab versions of Christmas classics in a 41-page PDF with MP3 recordings of the songs.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Let There Be Peace On Earth"

Sources

  1. Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: 'Let There Be Peace on Earth'".
  2. Hymnary.org: "Let There Be Peace on Earth" (The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 431).
  3. Hymnary.org: "Let There Be Peace on Earth".
  4. Kirkus Reviews: "Let There Be Peace on Earth: And Let It Begin with Me".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Butch Ross, The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book".
  6. Image: George Gammon Adams, Dove on the Wing with Olive Branch, wax on slate, ca. 1860. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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