John Sullivan Dwight

John Sullivan Dwight was an American Unitarian minister, Transcendentalist, translator, educator, and music critic born in Boston on May 13, 1813. He graduated from Harvard College in 1832 and Harvard Divinity School in 1836 and was ordained to a Unitarian ministry in Northampton in 1840. His parish ministry was brief; in 1841 he joined the Brook Farm community, where he directed the school, taught music, organized performances, and wrote criticism for The Harbinger.

After Brook Farm, Dwight increasingly devoted himself to musical journalism. In 1852 he founded Dwight's Journal of Music, which became a major voice in nineteenth-century American musical culture and helped cultivate American interest in European concert music, especially Beethoven. His work joined musical criticism with Transcendentalist interests in culture, education, and social improvement.

Dwight's English adaptation of Cappeau's French Christmas song is conventionally dated 1855 by authoritative hymnological sources. The earliest securely documented American sheet-music publication located in this research is the 1858 Christmas Song edition listed by the Library of Congress, with English words by Dwight and music by Adam. His version is a free adaptation rather than a strictly literal translation and became the dominant English text associated with Adam's melody.