Scripture Verse

Introduction

Origin of the Hymn

Cur­ious­ly, though this ebul­li­ent hymn is al­most uni­ver­sal­ly sung dur­ing Adv­ent and Christ­mas, it makes no di­rect ref­er­ence to the New Test­a­ment Christ­mas sto­ry. Ra­ther, the theme seems to deal more with the ul­ti­mate reign of Christ that will be­gin at the se­cond ad­vent. Here’s what Watts said about it and its com­pan­ion hymn, both de­rived from Psalm 98:

In these two Hymns which I have formed out of the 98th Psalm I have ful­ly ex­prest what I es­teem to be the first and chief Sense of the ho­ly Scrip­tures, both in this and the 96th Psalm, whose Con­cl­usions are both alike.

Isaac Watts

Regardless of Watts’ in­tent, Joy to the World is one of his most po­pu­lar works, ap­pear­ing in ov­er 1,600 hym­nals.

The tune is the piec­ing to­ge­ther of themes in Han­del’s Mes­si­ah found in the chor­us and in the in­stru­men­tal int­er­ludes in Lift up your heads and the in­tro­duc­tion and in­ter­ludes of the re­ci­ta­tive Comfort ye.

John Wil­son in Han­del and the Hymn Tune: II, Some Hymn Tune Ar­range­ments, in the Ja­nu­ary 1986 vol­ume of The Hymn has traced the tune’s ori­gins to A Col­lec­tion of Tunes, ed. T. Hawkes, 1833, and Vo­ce de Me­lo­día, ed. W[ill­iam] Hol­ford, ca. 1835.

It was po­pu­lar­ized in the USA by Lo­well Ma­son who in­clud­ed our ver­sion in Oc­ca­sion­al Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1836, and for no stat­ed rea­son named it AN­TI­OCH (see Hen­ry L. Ma­son, Hymn-Tunes of Lo­well Ma­son, 1944).

Young, p. 453