JOY TO THE WORLD

Music: Lowell Mason
Arrangement: Ryan Murphy

Isaac Watts’s 1719 paraphrase of Psalm 98 became a Christmas classic when it was set to music by Lowell Mason (1792–1872)—the “father of American hymnody”—and “Joy to the World” is now one of the most popular Christmas hymns in North America. Mason, who wrote musical settings for more than 1,600 hymns, routinely gave credit to other composers for his own hymn tunes, and described the music of “Joy to the World” as being “after G. F. Handel.” While there are fleeting similarities to fragments from Handel’s Messiah, Mason almost certainly crafted the joyous fanfare-like setting himself. Ryan Murphy’s new orchestral arrangement of “Joy to the World” is a jubilant fantasia that showcases a variety of orchestral instruments and the different voices that give expression to that joy.