Joy to the World, by Handel
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for Joy to the World
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (43 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in D major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 43 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (64 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 2 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
The tune was assembled in 1839 by Lowell Mason, who credited Handel. Phrases in it resemble Messiah closely enough that the attribution has never quite been settled or quite gone away.
How to play it
The opening is a descending scale. Keep it even and let the harmony underneath carry the interest.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
More free Handel sheet music
Who Handel was
German-born composer who made his career, and his fortune, in London, becoming so thoroughly identified with English musical life that he's often mistaken for English himself. He wrote Messiah, still the best-known oratorio ever composed, in a reported twenty-four days of nearly unbroken work. Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks were written for outdoor royal spectacles on the Thames and in London parks, meant to be heard by thousands at once rather than a concert hall's few hundred. He went blind in his final years but kept performing anyway, playing organ concertos from memory between the acts of his own oratorios almost up until he died.
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including D major.