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Piano sheet music for kids · Carol · Level 4: Up to the C above
Joy to the World
Free beginner piano sheet music: C major, 4/4, 20 bars. Press Play to hear it on a real piano, slow it down, or hear one hand at a time; click any note to start from there; print it for the music stand.
About this arrangement
The first four bars are one scale coming down: C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C, the whole octave, so the hand starts high with finger 5 on the C above middle C and walks down to the thumb. Bars 5 and 6 climb back up with a dotted-minim rhythm, and the long C in bar 7 is tied across the bar line and held for seven beats. The second half repeats little patterns of quavers on one note (“And heav’n and na-ture sing”) and ends with the octave leap from low C to high C in bar 17. The left hand plays chords on beats 1 and 3, and the oom-pah pattern under the long notes.
Practice tip: Play the opening scale with fingers 5 4 3 2 1 and then let the thumb tuck under for the last two notes, or simply shift the hand. Count the tied note in bars 7 and 8 out loud: “King” lasts for seven beats before “Let” on beat 4.
The words
Joy to the world! the Lord is come; let earth receive her King; let every heart prepare Him room, and heav'n and nature sing and heav'n and nature sing, and heav'n and nature sing, and heav'n, and heav'n and nature sing.
A short history
The words are by Isaac Watts, the English minister who wrote more than six hundred hymns, and come from his 1719 collection The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament. “Joy to the World” is his version of Psalm 98, and it was not written for Christmas at all: it looks forward to Christ’s return, not back to Bethlehem.
The tune, called Antioch, was published by the American composer and teacher Lowell Mason in 1836. Mason marked it “from Handel”, and its opening phrase does echo passages in Handel’s Messiah, though no single Handel melody matches it. Mason, a Savannah bank clerk turned Boston church musician, did more than anyone to put music lessons into American schools.
By the late 20th century it had become one of the most published Christmas hymns in North America.
Quick facts
- Tune
- Lowell Mason, 1836, after Handel
- Words
- Isaac Watts, 1719
- Key
- C major
- Time signature
- 4/4
- Length
- 20 bars
- Tempo
- Joyfully, crotchet = 126
- Difficulty
- Level 4: Up to the C above (piece 115 of 201)
- Type
- Carol
- 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
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