Music for Maundy Thursday

Here are some pieces for Maundy Thursday.

Ramona Luengen’s Ubi Caritas for TTBB is beautifully haunting. It’s available to purchase from Cypress Choral Music, with a downloadable perusal score, and here’s a recording of Chor Leoni singing it.

If you don’t have enough lower voices to split into four parts like that, and you still want to sing Ubi Caritas, but you don’t want to do the plainchant, you could try a metrical paraphrase, set as a hymn. That’s exactly what my version on CPDL is, with words by Marnanel Thurman:

As friendship fills our meeting-place,
Jesus is here;
He dwells in every friend’s embrace,
Each smile sincere,
Rejoicing in the love we share.
Wherever love is, God is there.

As friendship fills our meeting-place
Jesus brings peace.
Divisions heal, and by his grace
Arguments cease.
Forgiven friends are one in prayer:
Wherever love is, God is there.

As friendship fills our meeting-place,
Jesus our friend
Will smile to see us face to face,
World without end,
And hold us in his loving care:
Wherever love is, God is there.

And finally, I’ve been sent a hymn for Maundy Thursday by the author of the blog Conjubilant With Song. The text is by Frances Ridley Havergal, though I’ve only been able to find it in the post on that blog; and it fits to the tune PENMAENMAWR by Sarah Geraldine Stock; there are scores of the tune, and information about Sarah Stock, at Hymnary.org, which is probably the most comprehensive online hymnody resource I know. If I can verify the text, I’ll probably put a copy of this up on CPDL; in the meantime I look forward to digging into the rest of the Conjubilant With Song blog, particularly the Voices Found tag.