Joy to the World, a Hymn is Born!

Of all the hymns sung during the Christmas season, few are more widely spread or recognizable than Antioch.  In fact, it is the single most-published Christmas hymn in North America—even more than the beloved lullaby Stille Nacht!  But it took a long and convoluted path to get where it is today.   It is hymn #100 in The Hymnal 1982 used by the Episcopal Church, and familiarly known as “Joy to the World” for its first line.  You will note that the credit information attributes the words to “the father of English hymnody,” Isaac Watts, and the music to George Frideric Handel, arranged by Lowell Mason.  But as with most carols and hymns, its story is much more interesting than can be conveyed in a few single-line acknowledgements.

Dr. Isaac Watts

Isaac Watts was a contemporary of George Frideric Handel and of that other great English hymnist, Charles Wesley (who wrote Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!).  Watts was the eldest of nine children and was reared in his father’s Nonconformist footsteps.  He was a precocious child who began learning Latin at age four and went on to master Greek, Hebrew and French as well.  He grew up in a time when hymns were rarely sung in worship.  Congregational singing was limited to psalms set to odd and often cheerless tunes. As a disgruntled teenager, Isaac complained of the lack of harmony and good taste of the sung psalms to his father who was the deacon at their church.  His father, having heard the complaint one too many times, was not surprisingly sharp in his retort.  “When you can produce something better, we’ll use it.”  By the end of that Sunday, in time for the evening service (these were the days of three services each Sunday, remember), young Isaac did indeed produce something better, and the hymn “Behold the Glories of the Lamb” was sung for the first time at the end of that service.  The first verse of the hymn was a bit tongue in cheek as he wrote: “Behold the glories of the Lamb/ Amidst His Father’s throne/ Prepare new honours for his name/ And songs before unknown.”  It was rousingly successful, so after that, he composed at least one new hymn each week and collected them all into a volume.  His first volume of 210 hymns was published in 1709, forever changing the use of congregational music in worship.  Not only was Isaac Watts responsible for composing well over 600 hymns, but he wrote a number of books and treatises on theology.  His Speculations on the Human Nature of the Logos, which expressed his perspective of the eternal human nature of Christ and of that nature being inferior to God the Father, had him brought up on charges of Arianism.  A few decades later, his views became reflected in the early years of English Unitarianism.  Yet, rather than his liberal theology, it is his eloquence with hymnody that we remember Isaac Watts.  In The Hymnal 1982, only John Mason Neale, F. Bland Tucker, and Charles Wesley himself are credited with more individual hymns than Dr. Isaac Watts.

As for “Joy to the World,” the hymn has been set to a number of different tunes, including Richmond (better known to us as Advent and Easter hymns--see #72 and #212 in The Hymnal 1982) and Chesterfield (the most common tune setting used during the Victorian Era).  The hymn setting of Antioch was not used at all until it was published in just one of the many editions of The Church Hymnal, Revised and Enlarged, 1892. In fact, as long as the 1940 Hymnal was used in Episcopal churches in America, “Joy to the World” was sung as a general hymn set to the tune Richmond.  This makes a certain amount of sense, though.  For the words are a rephrasing of the last half of Psalm 98 (Sing to the Lord a New Song).  Watts intended the hymn to rejoice in Christ’s second coming rather than in celebration of his nativity.  Thus the verb tenses are in the active present, the implication being that Christ’s second coming is here and now within the hearts of true believers. 

Lowell Mason

So how did this become one of the most popular Christmas hymns of our time?  Well, isn’t it fitting that a hymn written by “the father of English hymnody” should be set to a tune by “the father of American church music”?  As a young man, Lowell Mason, who was born in Massachusetts in 1792, never considered that he could make a living in the field of music.  In his early adult years, he lived in Georgia and worked as a banker.  He composed music in his leisure time, but had great difficulty in getting it published at first.  You see, in the early 1800s, American church music was still very strongly influenced by William Billings.  Mason considered that style of singing as “backwoods and beneath the dignity of the modern American church-goer.”  He wanted to see hymns more in the style of classical composers and was heavily influenced by composers such as Handel, Haydn, Mozart and even Beethoven.  Finally, his collection of hymns was accepted by the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, but published anonymously to protect his position at the bank.  Apparently, the American church-goer liked the new style of hymns.  For the publication sold several editions and more than 50,000 copies.  Mason arranged the tune Antioch based on phrases gleaned from Handel’s Messiah (“Glory to God” for the first phrase and an up-tempo version of the introduction to “Comfort Ye My People” for the fugue phrases).  Mason himself attributes the composition of Antioch to G.F. Handel, but there’s a thick, hazy line separating the creative gift of one composer from the other.  Perhaps it is because of the connection to Messiah and its reputation for being a Christmas program (even though the oratorio was composed for Easter) that Antioch became a favored Christmas hymn.  Still, it wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century that Antioch really became the popular tune we recognize today.  Mason's music was first published in 1836 as a setting for Watts’ words.  But because Chesterfield was the more popular setting, Antioch was ignored until the end of the nineteenth century.  Lowell Mason’s significance to American music far surpasses mere composition of church music, of which he composed and arranged more than 1600 hymn tunes.  He was a reformer of music in the field of education as well.  In fact, he was the first music teacher in a public education school.  He was a strong advocate for music education for the masses, not just the talented few.  In 1833, he and several others including Samuel Eliot and George Webb co-founded the Boston Academy for Music in part to train music education teachers.

Joy to the World has been re-arranged, revised, and recorded hundreds of times by myriads of musicians since the Antioch setting became so popular.  One could say it is a work in progress as one artist influences another.  Yet, with each rendition, the words and tune intertwine more beautifully together and reflect off of one another so that, indeed, it brings joy to the world!