Richard Storrs Willis (February 10, 1819 – May 10, 1900) was an American composer, mainly of hymn music.
His best known melody is probably the one called, simply, Carol. This is the standard tune, in the United States, though not in Great Britain, of the much-loved hymn "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" (1850), with lyrics by Edmund Sears.
He was also a music critic and journal editor.
Willis then went to Germany, where he studied six years under Xavier Schnyder and Moritz Hauptmann.[citation needed] After returning to America, Willis served as music critic for the New York Tribune, The Albion, and The Musical Times, for which he served as editor for a time. He joined the New-York American-Music Association, an organization which promoted the work native of naturalized American composers. He reviewed the organization's first concert for their second season, held December 30, 1856, in the Musical World, as a "creditable affair, all things considered".[2]
Willis began his own journal, Once a Month: A Paper of Society, Belles-Lettres and Art, and published its first issue in January 1862.[3]
Willis died on May 7, 1900. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, in Detroit.
Brodsky Lawrence, Vera. Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. The University of Chicago Press, 1999. vol. III, p. 72. ISBN978-0-226-47015-3
Brodsky Lawrence, Vera. Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. The University of Chicago Press, 1999. vol. III, p. 463. ISBN978-0-226-47015-3
Further reading
The Book of World Famous Music, Popular, Classical and Folk (1966), by James Fuld.
The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church (1911), by Charles Nutter and Wilbur Tillett
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