Description

Joy

One of the best loved Christmas carols we sing today includes contributions from three gifted individuals who never met, and was not even written to be a song about the sacred circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus.

The man who wrote the text for the song was considered a nonconformist and a bit of a rebel by many in his country. Isaac Watts (1674-1748) was born in Southampton, England to parents who were dissenters from the Church of England. At an early age, Isaac showed a gift for rhyming and writing. He grew up in a world where music in every church meeting consisted of only psalms from the Old Testament, or scriptures put to music. As a young man, Watts complained to his father of the monotonous hymn singing, which people in the congregation did poorly and without feeling. His father challenged him to write something better, and that is exactly what he did.

Every week for two years, Isaac wrote a new text for a song. He paraphrased most of the Psalms and also included some of his personal interpretations of the scriptures. These updated texts were well received by church members, but critics described his writing as “worldly” and inappropriate. His work was published and in the collection of 210 Hymns and Spiritual Songs he explained:

“While we sing the praises of God in His church, we are employed in that part of worship which of all others is the nearest akin to heaven, and ‘tis pity that this of all others should be performed the worst upon earth.”

Writing hundreds of hymn texts in his lifetime, Isaac Watts is recognized today as the “Godfather of English Hymnody.” One of the hymns that he wrote, which was published in 1719, was based on parts of Psalm 98. Verse four states, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.” The song celebrated Christ’s second coming to the earth.

The second collaborator was Georg Friederic Handel (1685-1759), the popular German-born composer who lived in London. Isaac Watts and Handel were contemporaries in England, but did not collaborate on this hymn. Handel’s most famous work today is the Messiah. His contribution was acknowledged by the third contributor to the carol.

Across the Atlantic in the United States, and more than a century later, an American music director and educator, who became known as the “Father of American Church Music”, Lowell Mason (1792-1872), was writing music and producing books of hymns. His tunes were often influenced by the work of European classical composers, including Georg Friederic Handel. While living in Boston, he served as president of Handel and Haydn Society and worked as music superintendent for the Boston school system. He was a champion of youth music education and is even credited today with writing the tune for the children’s nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb. One of the musical styles which Lowell Mason used in his melodies was “fuging”, where voice parts entered one after the other in rapid succession, usually repeating the same words.

One of the hundreds of musical arrangements Lowell Mason made used a text from Isaac Watt’s hymnal. Using a melody which had been around in England for several years called, “Antioch”, he made some changes to the tune, crediting it as “arranged from Handel ”. Part of the melody was similar to some passages within Handel’s Messiah. They were combined with notes Mason wrote and repeating words in a fuging melody. The song was published in 1836 during the Christmas season. Titled “Joy to the World,” the song grew to become one of the most popular Christmas carols today. Though the hymn was conceived by Isaac Watts as a song more about the Second Coming of Christ than His birth, it is beloved as a song of praise and worship today.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing,

And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;

Let men their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;