Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

About this arrangement

The flowing tune from Bach’s cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (1723), the line the orchestra weaves around the choir’s hymn. It is in 9/8: nine quavers (eighth notes) in a bar, felt as three beats of three, and the right hand plays an unbroken stream of them, Bach’s notes moved down from his key of G major to C major. The line reaches from the G below middle C to the C above it. The left hand plays one note or chord on each beat. Bar 1 begins with a quaver rest, and here the tune comes to rest on C in bar 8 instead of running on.

Practice tip: Count “one two three, two two three, three two three” and lean very slightly on the first note of each group of three. Keep the quavers smooth and even, like flowing water, and let the left hand mark the three beats.

A short history

Bach wrote the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life), BWV 147, for the feast of the Visitation on 2 July 1723, in his first summer as cantor of St Thomas’s in Leipzig. He based it on an Advent cantata he had written in Weimar in 1716. Each half of the cantata ends with the same music: the choir sings a hymn, one line at a time, while the orchestra weaves this melody in triplets around it.

The hymn tune itself is older, written by Johann Schop in 1642, and the words Bach used come from a hymn by Martin Jahn of 1661.

The English title was used in a London publication of 1908. The pianist Myra Hess made a famous piano version in 1926, and the music is now heard at weddings and at Christmas all over the world.

Quick facts

Tune

Johann Sebastian Bach, 1723

Key

C major

Time signature

9/8

Length

8 bars

Tempo

Flowing, dotted crotchet = 56

Difficulty

Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 138 of 201)

Type

Classical

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers