Who composed "Joy to the World"

[Bren_Cameron_1]

So I was at the paidhi-girl’s school concert the other night. Very cute-- about 20 3-6 year olds singing Christmas carols. Then the older kids sang, and they did “Joy to the World,” which the program credited to Isaac Watts (of course) and…Lowell Mason? I’d always seen that tune with Handel’s name on it.

I know Lowell Mason wrote a lot of stuff, but did he write Joy to the World? And why does it show up so often credited to Handel? I did a search, and found mostly mentions of Handel, and two places where Mason was credited–once saying he’d falsely attributed it to GF because he was his favorite composer, and once saying he’d lifted (excuse me, adapted) it from somewhere in the Messiah. I don’t recall ever hearing that in there, but…what’s the story?

I know it’s not life or death, but it’s those little questions that bug you for days and days…

[HighSoci]

Isaac Watts wrote the hymn in 1719. The song is basically a paraphrase of the 98th Psalm.

[Bren_Cameron_1]

Right, I know Isaac Watts wrote the words. What I want to know is, who wrote the music?

[OttoDaFe]

I seem to recall reading that the setting is an adaptation of “He Shall Feed His Flock” from The Messiah. I find this a bit of a stretch (the “feel” is radically different), but the two are similar.

[Liberal]

It’s almost like one of those melodies that you use to practice your scales.

[Bren_Cameron_1]

Hmm. I just went and listened to “He Shall Feed His Flock.” And aside from the way the opening descends, I didn’t detect any real similarity, at least not to my ear. Perhaps its being in minor is tricking me. Maybe I should get the score out of the library, and compare the two by eye…

This site http://www.readersdigest.ca/christmas/kind_christmas/joy_world.html
says:

For nearly 100 years, the world accepted this ascription, until musicologists pointed out that not a single phrase in the music can be said to have come straight from any work of Handel’s.

While on the other hand, this one

http://www.christianlaw.org/joy_to_world.html

says:

Another wonder that makes this Christmas carol so precious is that an American composer later matched the words with a melody from Handel’s Messiah.

Now, I don’t take either Readers Digest or christianlaw.org to be experts in this particular field, but those were to only two references I found to the “took a melody from Handel” thing.

Wait, here’s another one: http://www.phillyburbs.com/christmascarols/joy.shtml

Over a hundred years later, American composer Lowell Mason put the words to music, and attributed the final product to his hero, George Fredrick Handel. The attribution of this carol to Handel lasted for more than a century, until dedicated musicologists were unable to find any link between the piece and Handel, then backtracked to give us the original writers.

Is there an authoritative source on these kinds of things?

[Bren_Cameron_1]

*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**It’s almost like one of those melodies that you use to practice your scales. **

You’re absolutely right, it’s very scalish, isn’t it, very step-wise, except for that octave jump in there.

[tomndebb]

Quite a few web sites repeat the “homage to Handel” version of the story in varying degrees of detail.
This “Joy to the World” site provides one of the more detailed versions. (Warning, it wants to play the song, for you.)

Many years after Watts’ death, Dr. Lowell Mason (1792-1872) took the hymn and placed it to music based on The Messiah by Frederick Handel (1685-1759), a contemperary of Issac Watts. Lowell started composing music in my home state of Georgia where he lived and worked as a banker (Savannah, GA) from 1812 - 1827. When he tried to publish his first set of musical works, it was rejected. Finally, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Massachusetts accepted it. Born in Massachusettes, in 1827 Lowell returned there from Georgia where he eventually became president over the society that finally published his works. He went on to a great music career, composing over 1600 sacred works, including “Antioch” in 1848 which now takes the title of Isaac Watt’s work, Joy To The World.

Several of the sites note that musicologists cannot find a single bar from “Joy” in any of Handel’s works.

[Squink]

Hoyt Axton also wrote a tune titled Joy to the World . It’s also popular with young choirs, and now I’m stuck humming the damned thing for the rest of the day. It’s that sort of tune.

[Snooooopy]

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine.

[Murasaki312a]

As an aside, I always heard that the title should always be simply “Messiah” and never “The Messiah” for reasons of blasphemy…don’t know if it’s true or not (the story that is, not whether it’s blasphemy)

Deb

[rowrrbazzle]

IIRC, the admittedly flimsy justification for attributing it to Handel was that the first 4 notes of the melody are identical to the first 4 notes of the tenor part of “Glory to God” (section 17, I think) from the Messiah.

[Bren_Cameron_1]

That is pretty flimsy.

Hey, does that mean Handel wrote “Fly Me to the Moon?”

[rowrrbazzle]

Different rhythm.

[Bren_Cameron_1]

Chop it off–it’s the same, at least the way I’m singing it.