It came upon the midnight clear

words Edmund Sears · arr. Arthur Sullivan

Choose your part: hear the opening with it lifted out of the choir, then practise it in the app. Free, and without an account.

The parts

The opening, 16 bars, on the app's piano: your part clearly, the others quietly.

With a free account, the app plays the parts sung.

Verse 1
It came up on the mid night clear, that glo rious song of old, from an gels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold: "Peace on the earth, good will to men, from heav'n's all gra cious King!" The world in so lemn still ness lay to hear the angels sing.
Verse 2
Still through the clo ven skies they come, with peaceful wings un furled; and still their heav'nly music floats o'er all the wea ry world; a bove its sad and low ly plains they bend on hov'ring wing: and ev er o'er its Ba sounds the bless -èd angels sing.
Verse 3
Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suf fered long; be neath the an gel strain have rolled two thou sand years of wrong; and man, at war with man, hears not the lovesong which they bring: O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the an gels sing.
Verse 4
For lo! the days are has tening on, by pro phet bards fore told, when, with the ev ercirc ling years comes round the age of gold; when peace shall ov er all the earth its an cient splen dours fling, and the whole world give back song which now the an gels sing.

Free to sing: Arthur Sullivan died in 1900 and Edmund Sears died in 1876.