Hymn of the Week: June 27, 2022
Hymn of the Week: Joy to the World
Christmas? in almost July!
Text Isaac Watts 1719
Tune Georg Frederic Handel (1742 ) & Thomas Hawels 1792
Based on Psalm 98
1 Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
let ev’ry heart prepare him room
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.
2 Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.
3 No more let sins and sorrows grow
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.
4 He rules the world with truth and grace
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness
and wonders of his love,
and wonders of his love,
and wonders, wonders of his love.
Isaac Watts
During the summer months, we will be looking at one hymn poet per month. For the month of June, we will be focused on 4 wonderful texts by one of the greatest hymn writers of this and every age, Isaac Watts.
Christmas? in almost July (Title for this week )
While this hymn has always been associated with Christ’s first coming as a baby in a manger, you will see from Dr. Hawn’s article that its origins are quite different and it has had a circuitous journey from where it began to where it ended. Our Presbyterian hymnal lists Joy to the World twice: once as the Christmas hymn we know it as, and then in the section of our hymnal Jesus Christ: Ascension and Reign which is concerned with Christ’s second coming.
“Joy to the world” is perhaps an unlikely popular Christmas hymn. First of all, it is based on a psalm, and, second, it celebrates Christ’s second coming much more than the first. This favorite Christmas hymn is the result of a collaboration of at least three people and draws its initial inspiration not from the Christmas narrative in Luke 2, but from Psalm 98.
The first collaborator was the English poet and dissenting clergyman, Isaac Watts (1674-1748). He paraphrased the entire Psalm 98 in two parts, and it first appeared in his famous collection, The Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719).
“Joy to the world” was taken from the second part of the paraphrase (Psalm 98:4-9), entitled “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom.” Watts, commenting on his paraphrase of the psalm, notes: “In these two hymns I have formed out of the 98th Psalm I have fully express what I esteem to be the first and chief Sense of the Holy Scriptures . . ..” For Watts, the psalms were not to be viewed as biblical material in their own right but had value only inasmuch as they pointed toward the New Testament.
A comparison between Watts’s psalm paraphrase and the original verses in the King James translation of Psalm 98:4-9 demonstrates considerable freedom:
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and the sound of a cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King. Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together. Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.” (KJV)
Curiously, stanza three is the exception. It is not based on Psalm 98 and is sometimes omitted:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.
The “curse” is a reference to Genesis 3:17 when God says to Adam following the eating of the apple from the tree, “Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt, thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” (KJV) As a part of “five-point Calvinism,” the “total depravity of man”, the curse is a significant part of classic Reformed theology, Isaac Watts’ theological perspective.
The second collaborator was an unwitting one, George Frederic Handel (1685-1759), the popular German-born composer residing in London. Though contemporaries in England did not collaborate on this hymn. Another pieced together portions of Handel’s Messiah to make up the tune that we sing in North America. The opening bars for the chorus, “Lift up your heads,” was adapted to the incipit “Joy to the world.” An instrumental portion of the opening tenor recitative, “Comfort ye,” provides a basis for the text “heaven and nature sing.” Such borrowings were common, the aesthetic notion being that the music of great musicians had in itself an innate beauty. Even a crude pastiche of “great music” implied that the result would also be of high quality.
The third collaborator who assured that this tune and text would appear together in the United States was the Boston music educator, Lowell Mason (1792-1872). It was Mason, a musician with significant influence in his day, who published his own arrangement of Handel’s melodic fragments in Occasional Psalms and Hymn Tunes (1836) and named the tune Antioch. While this is not the only tune to which Watts’s text is sung, it is certainly the dominant one. Actually, this tune remains virtually unknown in Great Britain.
When sung to Antioch, the text is repeated in the second section, reflecting a particular early American treatment of the melody called a “fuging tune.” A fuging tune was a compositional device initiated by American-born composer William Billings (1746-1800) where voice parts enter one after the other in rapid succession, usually repeating the same words.
The result of the fuging tune section is quite effective for the first stanza—“heaven and nature sing”—and the second stanza—“repeat the sounding joy”—and the fourth stanza, “wonders of his love” For the third stanza, with the text “far as the curse is found” echoing of Genesis 3:17-18 and Romans 5:20, the fuging compositional device seems a bit rollicking.
The result is a favorite Christmas hymn based on an Old Testament psalm, set to musical fragments composed in England, and pieced together across the Atlantic in the United States!
Thomas Haweis (b. Redruth, Cornwall, England, 1734; d. Bath, England, 1820) composer of the hymn tune RICHMOND Initially apprenticed to a surgeon and pharmacist, Haweis decided to study for the ministry at Oxford and was ordained in the Church of England in 1757. He served as curate of St. Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford, but was removed by the bishop from that position because of his Methodist leanings. He also was an assistant to Martin Madan at Locke Hospital, London. In 1764 he became rector of All Saints Church in Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, and later served as an administrator at Trevecca College, Wales, a school founded by the Countess of Huntingdon, whom Haweis served as chaplain. After completing advanced studies at Cambridge, he published a Bible commentary and a volume on church history. Haweis was strongly interested in missions and helped to found the London Mission Society. His hymn texts and tunes were published in Carmino Christo, or Hymns to the Savior (1792, expanded 1808).
Give a listen to both renderings!
