In the days leading up to our concert, Together We Sing, the author of our programme notes provides an alternative look at the pieces featured on Saturday 6^th June.  The series may be interspersed with other posts but will be more or less daily!  We hope you enjoy it.

My Spirit Sang All Day

What is joy?

And where is joy to be found?

According to one school of thought, there are six emotions to be found across all human cultures – happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear – and joy falls into the category of happiness.

But joy is not the same as happiness. Joy is typically more intense, more transient, and more deeply felt. It tends to arise spontaneously in response to meaningful experiences or connections. You might feel happy about singing the right notes in the right order, but joy is what hits you when your child laughs unexpectedly or you witness something profoundly beautiful.

Happiness, by contrast, often describes a broader, more sustained state of well-being. You can be a “happy person” in a general sense, but saying you’re a “joyful person” implies something different: a capacity for those sharp, peak emotional moments rather than a baseline mood.

All of which was probably at the back of Robert Bridges’ mind in 1890 when he wrote My Spirit Sang All Day. Or, forty years later, when Gerald Finzi set it to music as part of his Seven Poems of Robert Bridges, a decision that obviously had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he had just met his future wife …  Joy.

My spirit sang all day
O my joy.
Nothing my tongue could say,
Only My joy!
My heart an echo caught
O my joy
And spake, 
Tell me thy thought,
Hide not thy joy.
My eyes gan peer around,
O my joy
What beauty hast thou found?
Shew us thy joy.
My jealous ears grew whist;
O my joy
Music from heaven is't,
Sent for our joy?
She also came and heard;
O my joy,
What, said she, is this word?
What is thy joy?
And I replied,
O see, O my joy,
'Tis thee, I cried, 'tis thee:
Thou art my joy.