Richard Storrs Willis – A Complete Biography

Introduction

Richard Storrs Willis (1819–1900) was an American composer, music critic, and editor best remembered for “Carol,” the tune most U.S. congregations sing to Edmund Sears’s Christmas text “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” Trained in Germany during the heyday of Mendelssohn and steeped in New England letters through his celebrated literary family, Willis bridged European technique and American taste, shaping nineteenth-century hymnody and musical journalism.

Childhood

Willis was born on February 10, 1819, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prominent publishing family. His father, Deacon Nathaniel Willis—founder of The Youth’s Companion—and his mother, Hannah Parker, raised children who would become cultural figures, including the poet-editor Nathaniel Parker Willis and the novelist/columnist Fanny Fern (Sara Payson Willis). As a boy, Richard attended Chauncey Hall School and Boston Latin School, a conventional pathway for a literate Boston upbringing of the period.

Youth

Willis entered Yale College, where he twice led the student Beethoven Society (in 1838 and 1840) and graduated in 1841. Eager to deepen his craft, he then spent six formative years in Germany, studying with theorist-composer Moritz Hauptmann and the Swiss composer Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee; in this milieu he became personally acquainted with Felix Mendelssohn. These years anchored his harmonic language and his view that church music should be artistically serious yet singable—an aesthetic he later advocated in print and in his hymn tunes.

Adulthood

Back in the United States, Willis made his mark as a critic and editor in New York’s bustling musical press. He wrote criticism for the New-York Tribune and The Albion, and in 1852 he was appointed editor of Saroni’s Musical Times. That journal soon merged with Musical World and Journal of the Fine Arts to form the Musical World and New-York Musical Times, with Willis continuing as editor. He subsequently helmed and contributed to other musical periodicals and, broadening his editorial interests, launched his own monthly, Once a Month: A Paper of Society, Belles-Lettres and Art, in January 1862. He also participated in the New-York American-Music Association, a body promoting works by American and naturalized composers.

Willis published influential collections and essays on church music, notably Church Chorals and Choir Studies (1850) and Our Church Music (1856), followed later by Waif of Song (1876) and Pen and Lute (1883). Through these books and his columns, he argued for dignified congregational song informed by European craft yet suited to American congregations.

Major Compositions

Willis’s enduring musical legacy centers on “Carol” (1850), the lilting 6/8 tune now inseparable—in the United States—from Edmund Sears’s “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” The melody first appeared with other texts in Church Chorals and Choir Studies (1850); by the later nineteenth century it had become the standard American pairing with Sears’s poem. In Commonwealth countries, however, the text is commonly sung to Arthur Sullivan’s later adaptation “Noel,” underscoring how Willis’s tune became a distinctively American sound of Christmas.

Beyond “Carol,” Willis’s output—much of it aimed at congregational or domestic music-making—was disseminated through his anthologies and hymn collections rather than through large concert works, a distribution typical for American composers who worked at the nexus of music and publishing in the mid-nineteenth century.

Death

Willis spent his final years in Detroit, Michigan, where he died in May 1900. Contemporary and later sources disagree on the exact date—several list May 7, 1900, and a Detroit Free Press notice appeared on May 8, which supports a death no later than the 7th; some references, however, give May 10. Sources also differ on his resting place, with many citing Woodlawn Cemetery (Detroit) and at least one memorial listing Elmwood Cemetery. The balance of published references favors May 7 and interment at Woodlawn.

Conclusion

Richard Storrs Willis combined Yankee letters, German training, and New York editorial energy to shape how nineteenth-century Americans sang in church and read about music. As a critic and editor, he helped professionalize musical discourse; as a composer-compiler, he provided repertoire that balanced craft and accessibility. “Carol” remains his signature contribution—an annual reminder that an American tune from 1850 can still define the sound of Christmas for millions.