Joy to the World

What you get, immediately after purchase
📄 The sheet music as a PDF, printable and readable on a tablet
🎧 The MP3 audio recording, to learn the piece by ear
✉️ A download link by email, with no account to create

This score is 2 pages long.

Joy to the World was born of a meeting between two men who never knew each other: the English minister Isaac Watts, who wrote the words in 1719, drawing on Psalm 98, and the American composer Lowell Mason, who in 1839 gave it the tune we know today, published under the name Antioch and presented as inspired by Handel. First conceived as a hymn of praise rather than a Christmas carol, it has nonetheless become one of the most sung holiday hymns in the English-speaking world, taken up by choirs and by the great voices of jazz, soul and gospel alike. Its bold melody, which tumbles down the scale in the very first phrase before climbing back towards a jubilant refrain, rings out brightly on the accordion. A carol that fills the house with celebration from the very first notes.