Musicians are tearing apart this ‘Joy to the World’ cake with confusing notation
2 December 2020, 17:41 | Updated: 3 December 2020, 11:23
Beware, cake-makers: if you slip up on your decorative music notation, musicians will always step in, analyse your work, and make memes...
When famed US hymn composer Lowell Mason wrote the melody to ‘Joy to the World’ in the mid-19th century, he wrote it in 2/4 time with a bouncy, dotted rhythm.
This 21st-century cake-maker, who decorated a gourmet delight with the words ‘Joy to the World… is a major scale’, reckoned the original meter could do with some sprucing up.
But some musicians weren’t happy about the changes...
Comments include: "Cute, but the metric notation is a tad bit off", "None of the measures have a full 4 beats" and "oh this is a train wreck".
Ouch. Well, at least the key signature is right…
Read more: The time a small church performed Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and it went badly wrong >
Didn’t spot all the mistakes?
Here’s the original score for comparison:
All credit for this scrumptious cake goes to Deborah Rambo Sinn.