‘Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less’
I almost missed this anniversary and hadn’t realised that Isaac Watts was born not far from where I now live. He’s a hero of mine and given that I won’t be writing posts in another 350 years, I’ll make my pitch now for this unusual chap who cheerfully lived through perilous times.
Everyone has heard something he wrote. Even if church is absolutely not your thing, you’ll struggle to make it to New Years Day without hearing several arrangements of Joy to the World, a cheerful anthem with added zest from Handel’s magnificent melody. Meanwhile, the more mournful, O God our help in ages past, seems to be the sort of thing religious people sing, at least in films and dramas. I vaguely recall Ichabod Crane warbling it nervously in a Sleepy Hollow cartoon I saw as kid.
Isaac was an innovator who wrote hundreds of hymns when any church music bar the Psalms, was frowned upon, even though many congregations found them hard work. Apart from his theological doubts about the playbook restrictions, he found the quality terrible and complained to his father one day. Well, reasoned Isaac Watts senior, do something better. Which he did. And kept on doing.
