Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring: Is Bach's most famous piece really his?

Bach Society Brasil
1 day ago
7 min read

Few melodies are as recognizable as "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring ." Ii carries a small paradox: Johann Sebastian Bach's most famous piece of music is perhaps the least "his" of all.

The melody of the hymn is not by Bach; the lyrics are not by Bach; nor is the title by which it became famous. And yet, there is something profoundly Bachian about it. In this post we will dismantle this small puzzle of authorship and follow the work from its origin, in the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben , BWV 147, to the new versions and adaptations it has undergone from the Baroque period to our times.

An authorship puzzle

The musical theme known as "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring" is the final movement of a sacred cantata, the chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude ("Jesus remains my joy"). In Bach's daily practice, these chorales were often harmonizations of Lutheran hymns composed by others. The line of this specific hymn was not composed by Bach: it is by Johann Schop , a violinist and composer from Hamburg, who wrote the melody Werde munter, mein Gemüte in 1642. The lyrics, in turn, come from the hymn Jesu, meiner Seelen Wonne , by the poet Martin Janus (1661). What Bach did was harmonize and orchestrate this already known Lutheran chorale—and, above all, write around it the continuous stream of triplets (groups of three notes in continuous flow) that the orchestra plays beneath the melody.

And that's precisely where the paradox lies. What we hum as "the melody" of "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring" is not actually Schopenhauer's hymn, but rather this counterpoint that meanders in triplets—and that, indeed, is by Bach. In Baroque aesthetics, it's not a matter of "main melody" and "accompaniment": they are two equally important layers coexisting simultaneously, woven together by the art of polyphony.

The idea of individual authorship — a completely original work, born from a single mind — is a modern notion, inherited primarily from the 19th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, taking a Lutheran chorale known to the entire congregation and giving it a new counterpoint was not "plagiarism" or "someone else's work": it was the very craft of the church musician.

A black and white portrait, half-figure, of a 17th-century man with long hair and period clothing — the composer Johann Schop. — Johann Schop, violinist and composer from 17th century Hamburg. It was his melody of the hymn that Bach, decades later, would transform into the famous choir now known as "Jesus, Joy of Men". (Engraving according to François Stuerhelt, 17th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

An interrupted cantata in Weimar

The famous chorale is one of the movements of a larger work, a sacred cantata with a dual origin. Its first version, cataloged as BWV 147a, was created in Weimar around 1716, based on a text by the court poet Salomo Franck —secretary of the ducal consistory and Bach's main literary collaborator during that period—and was intended for the fourth Sunday of Advent.

The circumstances surrounding the composition are curious. When the elderly chapel master Johann Samuel Drese died on December 1, 1716, Bach assumed the musical responsibilities of the court and wrote cantatas for three consecutive Sundays of Advent (BWV 70a, 186a, and 147a), well beyond his contractual obligation of one cantata per month. The autograph of the third, the 147th, is left unfinished. Why? The sources don't tell us: it may have been illness, a dispute over the leadership of the chapel, or the young Drese, the deceased's son, asserting his position. It's unknown. The work would only be resumed and completed years later in Leipzig.

A 16th-century Mannerist painting depicting four women standing in flowing, colorful robes; the two central figures greet each other face-to-face—the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. — The Visitation, by Pontormo (c. 1528–1530), in the Propositura dei Santi Michele and Francesco, in Carmignano, near Florence. The scene - Maria's meeting with her cousin Isabel - is that of the Feast of Visitation, the day Bach presented the cantata BWV 147, in 1723. (Jacopo Pontormo, c. 1528–1530. Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

A New Beginning in Leipzig: The Visitation of 1723

In 1723, Bach took up the post of cantor (musical director) at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. He soon recovered the music of the original Weimar cantata and expanded it, adding three new recitatives and the two choral movements that carry the famous melody. He presented the definitive version on July 2, 1723, on the Feast of the Visitation of Mary, which celebrates the episode in which Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth and sings the Magnificat.

It is worth remembering what a sacred cantata was then. The genre that Bach practices here had a recent origin: around 1700, the poet Erdmann Neumeister imported the form of the Italian secular cantata into the Lutheran church, with its recitatives and arias inherited from opera. The result is a mixed form that Bach would bring to its peak: biblical verse, free poetry (recitative and aria), and chorale. The cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben has exactly this breadth: ten movements divided into two parts (one before, the other after the sermon, which lasted about an hour), with a brilliant opening chorus crowned by the natural trumpet.

Listen to the sound of the natural trumpet in the opening of Magnificat BWV 243 — Bach Society Brazil

Interestingly, the work known worldwide as "Cantata No. 147" was actually the 32nd cantata Bach composed that has survived to this day: the BWV number (from the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis catalog) organizes works by genre and grouping, not by date. And there's something more to that summer of 1723: musicologist Peter Williams observes that it was precisely in Bach's first weeks in Leipzig that his melodic sense "blossomed"—BWV No. 147 and the Magnificat, both linked to the Visitation, feature more enchanting melodies, shorter arias, and richer choruses than usual. The melody that would conquer the world was born in this surge of lyricism.

Handwritten page from a Baroque musical score in the handwriting of Johann Sebastian Bach. — The opening page of the cantata BWV 147, from where comes the melody that the world knows as "Jesus, Joy of the

Heart, mouth, deed, and life.

The title of the cantata — Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben , "Heart and mouth, deed and life" — already announces its theme: to confess the faith with all that one is. And, at the end of each of the two parts, the same chorus always returns, with the same music and different verses from the hymn of Martin Janus. At the end of the first part, movement 6:

Wohl mir, daß ich Jesum habe, o wie feste halt' ich ihn, daß er mir mein Herze labe, wenn ich krank und traurig bin.

Happy am I, that I have Jesus, / oh, how firmly I hold onto Him, / so that He may comfort my heart / when I am sick and sad.

And, at the close of the second part, movement 10 — the world-famous passage:

Jesus bleibet meine Freude, meines Herzens Trost und Saft, Jesus wehret allem Leide, er ist meines Lebens Kraft, meiner Augen Lust und Sonne, meiner Seele Schatz und Wonne.

Jesus continues to be my joy, / comfort and lifeblood of my heart; / Jesus drives away all suffering, / is the strength of my life, / the delight and sunshine of my eyes, / the treasure and delight of my soul.

Notice the difference between what the lyrics say and the name by which we know the piece. The German version speaks of Jesus as joy, consolation, the strength of life, "the sun of the eyes." The English title that made the song famous worldwide, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," is a free paraphrase of the poet laureate Robert Bridges , from the 20th century, not a translation. And even our "Jesus, Joy of Men" is a consecrated convention, not a literal version. Yet another layer of distance between fame and origin.

How "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring" conquered the world.

If the melody is everywhere today, it's largely thanks to a pianist. In 1926, the Englishwoman Myra Hess published a transcription for solo piano (and, in 1934, for four hands) that became her signature piece and took the choir out of the church. Curiously, the slow and reverent aura we associate with the piece—the solemn wedding music—is a 20th-century construct: the original German hymn was vibrant, a song of praise. Below is one of the most celebrated recordings of this arrangement, by Myra herself.

▶ Myra Hess's arrangement, performed by the composer herself — watch it on YouTube

From then on, the melody conquered the world in all kinds of versions:

Apollo 100 — " Joy" (1972) : an accelerated instrumental version that reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and reappeared strongly in the film Boogie Nights .
George Winston — "Joy " (from the album December , 1982): a solo piano version of enormous scope.
Wendy Carlos , on the pioneering album Switched-On Bach (1968 ): the piece recreated on the Moog synthesizer.
Appearances in film and television — from Downton Abbey to Brooklyn Nine-Nine — as well as countless arrangements for choir, organ, guitar, and even the Muppets.

Listening Suggestions

It's worth listening to the choral piece back in its original context. Below is the first choral piece from the cantata performed by the Bach Society of Brazil, with the Bach Brazil Ensemble playing period instruments, under the direction of Fernando Cordella; and then, the entire cantata BWV 147 performed by the Netherlands Bach Society, so that one can see how the famous passage is merely the serene conclusion of a much larger work.

▶ The choral piece "Wohl mir, daß ich Jesum habe" by the Bach Society Brazil (period instruments)

▶ Cantata BWV 147 completed by the Netherlands Bach Society (All of Bach project)

Bibliographic References

BOYD, Malcolm (ed.). Oxford Composer Companions: JS Bach . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

DAVID, Hans T.; MENDEL, Arthur; WOLFF, Christoph (eds.). The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents . New York: WW Norton, 1998.

GARDINER, John Eliot . Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

WILLIAMS, Peter . JS Bach: A Life in Music . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

WOLFF, Christoph . Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician . New York: WW Norton, 2000.