Hymn #116: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel | First Congregational Church

This metrical hymn based on the “O antiphons” of the medieval church may date from the twelfth century, although the source for the translation is the version found in a French Roman Catholic hymnal of 1710.

John Mason Neale translated the original five stanzas of this text beginning “Draw nigh, draw nigh, Emmanuel” for his Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851). He later altered the first line to the present “O come, O come.” The other two stanzas (2 and 7) are the work of Henry Sloane Coffin from his Hymns of the Kingdom of God (1916 ed.).

This metrical hymn tune, VENI EMMANUEL was likely derived from phrases of plainsong settings. It first appeared in plainsong notation on a four-line staff in Thomas Helmore’s The Hymnal Noted (1854) with the heading “From a French Missal in the National Library, Lisbon.”

Thomas Helmore compiled and edited his Hymnal Noted in 1852, which provided musical settings of John Mason Neale’s translations of Latin hymns. Both men were leaders in the Oxford movement in England and sought to restore ancient plainsong in the Anglican Church.