Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee: A Song History
The words of "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee" are by Henry van Dyke, and Hymnary.org dates the text to 1907.[1] A familiar story, retold in the United Methodist "History of Hymns" series, says he wrote it while a guest preacher at Williams College in Massachusetts and gave it to the college president, crediting the nearby Berkshire mountains as his inspiration.[2] Hymnologist Chris Fenner notes that the story came down through van Dyke's son Tertius and that its chronology is hard to square with the record: Harry Garfield, the president in the story, did not move to Williamstown until after June 1908.[3] Fenner suggests that any truth in it may lie in a visit in 1908 or 1909 when van Dyke gave Garfield a handwritten copy, so in the sources consulted here, where and when the hymn was written remains uncertain.[3]
William Hart, Autumn Scene in the Adirondacks, oil on canvas, 1877. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the hymn.
Van Dyke wrote the poem with Beethoven's music in mind, and the sources disagree on its date: The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911) prints it as "Hymn of Joy" dated 1908, while the copy in The Hymnal, published by the Presbyterian Board in Philadelphia that same year with Beethoven's melody, is dated 1907.[3] Later hymnals have generally followed The Hymnal's text, drawn from van Dyke's manuscript and his 1910 revisions, not the Poems version.[3] The tune comes from the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, which sets Friedrich Schiller's poem "An die Freude" and was first performed in Vienna on May 7, 1824.[4] Sources differ on who turned the theme into a hymn tune: the United Methodist series credits the British composer Edward Hodges (1796-1867),[2] while Fenner identifies Elam Ives Jr.'s Mozart Collection of Sacred Music (1846) as the first hymn-tune adaptation and treats Hodges's two settings in The Trinity Collection of Church Music (1864) as a later, often-cited arrangement.[3]
Writing in that series, sacred-music professor Dr. Hawn calls it "one of the best-known hymns in the English language," and notes that the United Methodist Hymnal reinstates the syncopated rhythm Beethoven wrote where the last line of each stanza begins.[2] Van Dyke's wording is often revised, and the fourth stanza's male-centered language is the most common target.[3] Judy House includes it in Classic Hymns In Multiple Parts, a book of ensemble arrangements of twenty classic hymns for dulcimer groups, each in three, four or five parts, in DAD tuning with baritone parts in ADA.[5]
Sources
- Hymnary.org: "Joyful, joyful, we adore thee".
- Discipleship Ministries: "History of Hymns: Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee".
- Hymnology Archive: "Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee".
- Britannica: "Ode to Joy".
- Judy House: "Classic Hymns In Multiple Parts".
- Image: William Hart, Autumn Scene in the Adirondacks, oil on canvas, 1877. The Cleveland Museum of Art.