Lewis H. Redner, Phillips Brooks

O Little Town of Bethlehem

The text for this carol was written by the Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks in 1865, and it was inspired by his visit to Bethlehem three years earlier.
He asked his organist in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, Lewis Redner, to write a tune to his poem.
Lewis Redner himself later told that he found it hard to write a good tune for the text. But the night before the first performance 'I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.'