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Originally Posted by Dag
^^ Holy Moly :O . I take he's talking about creditting Isaac Watts for "Joy to the World".
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Well, he included the Bach track in his post, so that's what I responded to.
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From Google it seems George Friederic Handel most likely did the source melody, while Lowell Mason arranged and adapted it using Isaac Watts's lyrics. So... dunno?
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The first part of the "Joy to the World" melody used to be thought of as an adaptation of a bar from Handel's
Messiah, but this isn't really the case:
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Joy to the World was not composed by Handel. The tune first appeared in the early 1830's in English tune-books. William Holford revised the tune and published it (which he called Comfort) in the mid-1830's and attributed it to Handel because of the tunes' resemblance to the opening phrases of the choruses Lift Up Your Heads and Glory to God from Messiah. The American composer Lowell Mason (1792-1872) in 1839 retained the attribution to Handel, changed the tune-name to Antioch, and united it with Isaac Watt's hymn [i.e., text] for the first time. Thus, Joy to the World was born.
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http://gfhandel.org/faqs.htm
So, the composer attributed should actually be William Holford. Watts still has no business being credited as composer though.
As for Handel, he was long dead and buried by the time Joy to the World came about.
If anyone's interested, have a listen to what Handel actually composed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WkyTwXa4Tw
As you can hear, it's just the first four notes that are the same as Joy.
To give you an idea of how ridiculous this attribution could be, the truly complete accreditation would be: "Arranged by Mitsuto Suzuki & Tsuyoshi Sekito et al., based on an adaptation by Lowell Mason of a composition by William Holford expanded from an English folk-tune which may or may not have been inspired by measure 1 of "Lift Up Your Heads" from Handel's
Messiah."
Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?