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The text of this Christmas poem has been set to music many times, the most famous settings being composed by Gustav Holst and Harold Edwin Darke in the early 20th century.
Holst's setting, "Cranham", is a hymn tune setting suitable for congregational singing, since the poem is irregular in metre and any setting of it requires a skilful and adaptable tune. The hymn is titled after Cranham, Gloucestershire and was written for the English Hymnal of 1906.
The Darke setting, written in 1909 while he was a student at the Royal College of Music, is more advanced and each verse is treated slightly differently, with solos for soprano and tenor (or a group of sopranos and tenors) and a delicate organ accompaniment. This version is favoured by cathedral choirs, and is the one usually heard performed on the radio broadcasts of Nine Lessons and Carols by the King's College Choir. Darke served as conductor of the choir during World War II.
Benjamin Britten includes a setting for chorus in his work "A Boy Was Born". Other settings include those by Robert C L Watson, Bruce Montgomery, Bob Chilcott, Michael John Trotta, Robert Walker, Eric Thiman, who wrote a setting for solo voice and piano, and Leonard Lehrman.
Roger Jones, the composer of many Gospel musicals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, has a beautiful setting of this hymn for solo, choir and orchestra, as part of his Christmas musical "While Shepherds Watched".
Fredrik Sixten a Swedish composer includes a brand new setting for both soprano solo and tenor solo with organ, or a version for Chorus (SATB) and small orchestra.
Read more about this topic: In The Bleak Midwinter