There's A Song In The Air: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The words are by Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881), who trained in medicine before turning to journalism. He worked on the Springfield Republican, won a wide readership with essays signed “Timothy Titcomb,” and in 1870 helped found Scribner’s Monthly, which he edited.[1] The poem dates from 1872. That year it was printed under the title “A Christmas Carol” in Holland’s collection The Marble Prophecy and Other Poems, published in New York by Scribner, Armstrong.[1][2][3] In 1874 it appeared in The Brilliant, a Sunday school songbook edited by W. T. Giffe. Hymnary.org and C. Michael Hawn both call this its first appearance, but the 1872 book came earlier.[1][4]

American quilt with a large many-pointed star pieced in shaded diamonds at its center, surrounded by flowers and small stars

American, Star of Bethlehem Quilt, cotton, ca. 1835. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The text did not appear in a hymnal until 1905, in the Methodist Hymnal of that year.[4] One of that book’s music editors, Karl Pomeroy Harrington (1861–1953), had written the tune CHRISTMAS SONG in 1904, and the hymnal gave it as the second of three settings of the words.[4][5] Harrington’s tune is now the usual one for this text. Hymnary.org lists the words in more than two hundred hymnals, among them the 1989 United Methodist Hymnal, though a few books have set them to other melodies.[4][2]

Find books with There's A Song In The Air for sale →

Sources

  1. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church), C. Michael Hawn: “History of Hymns: ‘There’s a Song in the Air’”.
  2. Hymns and Carols of Christmas: “There’s a Song in the Air”.
  3. Internet Archive (scan): Josiah Gilbert Holland, “The Marble Prophecy and Other Poems” (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1872).
  4. Hymnary.org: “There’s a Song in the Air”.
  5. Hymnary.org: “CHRISTMAS SONG (Harrington)”.