Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring: A Song History

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"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" is the English name for a chorale movement in Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147[1]. The cantata began in Weimar as a shorter piece for the Fourth Sunday in Advent of 1716, on texts by Salomo Franck[2][3]; one text edition hedges on whether that version, catalogued as BWV 147a, was ever finished and performed, and four of its movements live on in the later cantata[3]. Because Leipzig did not allow concerted church music during Advent, Bach adapted the work there for the Feast of the Visitation, expanded it into two parts, and first performed it on 2 July 1723[2][1]. The chorale was among his Leipzig additions, and the same setting closes each half of the cantata, sung to different stanzas of the hymn[2][4].

Laurent de La Hyre painting of a woman in red tuning a large lute beside an organ, with open music books on a table

Laurent de La Hyre, Allegory of Music, oil on canvas, 1649. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its seventeenth-century music-making; it has no connection to Bach’s cantata.

The melody itself was not Bach's. It was composed by Johann Schop and first appeared in 1642 in the Lüneburg collection Himmlische Lieder, paired with Johann Rist's hymn "Werde munter, mein Gemüte," under which name the tune is still known[5][6]. The words Bach set come from "Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne" by Martin Jahn (also spelled Janus), a churchman who worked in Silesia; the hymn is dated 1661 and was first printed in Nuremberg in 1665[6][4]. Of the many rhythmic versions of Schop's tune, Hymnary.org notes, the one Bach used in this cantata has become the standard[6].

The English words "Jesu, joy of man's desiring" open a two-stanza English text based on Jahn's hymn, which Hymnary.org attributes, with some caution, to Robert Bridges; that first line has also become a name for the tune[6]. The movement has also had a long life apart from its words: Oxford University Press published Myra Hess's arrangement for piano, "the chorale from cantata no. 147," in 1926[7], and it has become one of Bach's most frequently arranged works[2].

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Sources

  1. Bach Cantatas Website: "Cantata BWV 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben".
  2. Bachipedia: "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben".
  3. University of Vermont (Bach cantata texts): "BWV 147a Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben".
  4. University of Vermont (Bach cantata texts): "BWV 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben".
  5. Bach Cantatas Website: "Chorale Melodies used in Bach's Vocal Works: Werde munter, mein Gemüthe".
  6. Hymnary.org: "Jesu, joy of man's desiring".
  7. University of Pennsylvania Libraries: "Jesu, joy of man's desiring: the chorale from cantata no. 147" (catalog record).