Music for Easter Day

It’s almost time… what might people sing tomorrow? Or even tonight?

Easter Day tends to be a time for combining strong opinions about music people know and love with exhausted church musicians who have been at church more than home for the past week. Easter Eve, if you have a service then, is similar, but often with a smaller congregation. So while there’s plenty on the Easter page here, it can be more challenging at Easter than at some other times to make changes to “the usual” music.

This is a great shame, not least because of the role of women in the discovery that Jesus was not, as expected, in the tomb, but risen. Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s Dialogo fra Maria Magdalena details that Easter morning scene at the empty tomb in a conversation between Mary Magdalen and two angels. It’s set for SAAT and continuo, and there’s a recording on Youtube:

…okay, maybe that’s more the sort of thing for an Easter afternoon concert than your average parish Eucharist. It’s great stuff, though; do have a listen.

Judith Ward has a unison setting of “Now the Green Blade Riseth” which is thoughtfully and charmingly composed, with a piano accompaniment that supports the singers without resorting to doubling every note — and there are a couple of bars of unaccompanied voice every once in a while. It would work well for a small choir or even a solo singer, and I think the piano part would transfer well to the organ, too. It’s available from the Small Choirs International site — you’ll have to scroll down or search for it, though.

If you’re after something crunchier, Libby Larsen has an a capella Alleluia — there’s a media player of some sort in that page, which I can’t embed here. It’s published by Schirmer and there are a few pages of a perusal score.

I could go on and on here, but there are several more weeks of Easter to come and I don’t want to use everything up! So I’ll end with some organ music. Alison Willis has a set of Three Easter Chorale Preludes at Composers’ Edition, available for purchase in deadtree or download format. Here’s one of them, Paschalia, on Soundcloud:

Music for Good Friday

Stephanie Martin‘s “Drop, Slow Tears” for SATB (with some divisi near the end) is stunningly beautiful, and happens to be available as a free download from her website. I particularly like the way each four lines of text is handled differently, reflecting the text. There’s a recording of it on Soundcloud:

If you have a smaller choir, or two soloists, you could sing my English setting of Crux Fidelis for SA and organ. This can also be sung in unison, because the organ part effectively doubles the alto line.

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.

Music for Palm Sunday

I’m getting slightly behind on things again, oh dear! But I have some great recommendations for later in Holy Week, which I’ll post on Monday or Tuesday, and I’m (still) working my way through the data entry backlog, so there will be lots of new music going onto the site next week too.

In the meantime, finding music for Palm Sunday turned out to be more difficult than I expected, though in fairness most things that work for Passiontide would work for the Liturgy of the Passion, and the Liturgy of the Palms tends to have pretty stable choices from year to year, or at least it did when I was at St Andrew’s.

I did find A Song for Palm Sunday by Hazel Hudson, set for SAB or unison with piano or organ accompaniment (it looks to me like it would be slightly better on the piano). I couldn’t find a recording online, but you can download the score from the Small Choirs International website (you’ll have to scroll down or do a text search on the page to find it). If you do have a small church choir, particularly one without much going on in the lower voices, that site is invaluable, with a good selection of arrangements of well-known classics, and music written specifically for smaller choirs, all free for use in church services.

Music for Sunday, 18th March: Lent 5 (Passion Sunday), Year B

Passiontide already!

The readings for this Sunday are:

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-13 OR Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

Jeremiah — foretelling a new covenant, one in which the law is written on people’s hearts, and in which people know the Lord by his forgiveness of sins
Psalm 51 — Miserere mei. I have sinned; cleanse me from my sin, create within me a clean heart and a right spirit
Psalm 119 — Teach me your ways, Lord; delighting in the statues of God
Hebrews — the high priesthood of Christ, and eternal salvation through Him
John — Some Greeks want to see Jesus, and Jesus is alluding to his death.

One possible piece for this Sunday would be “A New Heart” by Melissa Dunphy.
The text, from Ezekiel 36:26 (“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”) is particularly suitable if you are using or wish to allude to Psalm 51. The setting is for SAB and piano, and easy to sing and play. I love the directness and sparse simplicity of this piece; there’s nothing extraneous or distracting. It’s available to purchase from MorningStar Music Publishers and a pdf perusal score and mp3 are available.

Music for Sunday, 11th March: Lent 4 (Mothering Sunday), Year B

There’s a choice of two lots of lectionary readings in Common Worship this Sunday, depending on where you want your focus to be; but if you’re in England it’s pretty likely that mothers or mothering will be the theme in some way or other.

This is a theme that’s not easy for everyone, and which can bring out strong feelings. These are not neatly or easily sidestepped, but it can help, I think, to focus on mothering more than on mothers, and on the mothering qualities of God.

‘Mothering God, You Gave Me Birth’ is an ideal hymn text for this, and the setting of it by Carolyn Jennings is both simple enough to be used as a congregational hymn in some contexts, and lyrical enough to stand as a simple choir anthem in others. The words, by Jean Janzen, are an adaptation of words by Julian of Norwich, so this is really a collaboration between three women.

Listen on YouTube.

The hymn is in the following hymnals, according to hymnary.org:
Evangelical Lutheran Worship #735
Glory to God: the Presbyterian Hymnal #7
With One Voice #769

If you don’t have any of those, though, it’s available to buy (in an arrangement by Zebulon Highben) from JW Pepper.

Many thanks to Jo Kershaw for pointing this one out.

New music this week: Sheena Phillips

This week I’ve added four pieces by Sheena Phillips to the Easter page. The site already had some of her work, but it’s good to be able to add some more, and fill out what was a rather sparse-looking Easter page. They’re very definitely on the “special occasions” side of things, involving not only organ but also brass.

A word to the wise: if you’re going to have some brass join you for Easter Day, and you want them to play at the same time as the organ, do check your organ is at A440 first. The one I used to play at St Andrew’s Leytonstone isn’t, it’s about 18 cents sharp, and it would have sounded absolutely dreadful to add an instrument tuned to standard pitch.

Music for Sunday 4th March: Lent 3, Year B

The readings for this Sunday are:


Exodus 20:1-17
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
John 2:13-22

The reading from Exodus is the Ten Commandments.

The Psalm is about the glory of God, as displayed both by the heavens and by God’s law.

The reading from 1 Corinthians is asking some questions about wisdom, and noting that to those called, Christ is both the power and wisdom of God, rather than the foolishness it might seem to others.

The Gospel reading is Jesus driving the money-changers out of the Temple — and his disciples recognising his actions as prophesied by Scripture. He then claims that he will raise the Temple (meaning his body, this time) in three days, and his disciples remember that, later.

If you’re up for a challenge, there’s Hilary Campbell’s SATB setting of “The spacious firmament on high”, Joseph Addison’s paraphrase of Psalm 19, titled “The Hand That Made Us Is Divine” and available from Jeremy Dibb music. I sang this myself in around 2009, I think — I was still studying at Trinity College of Music at the time, so it must have been around then. The piece has extensive divisi and plenty of challenging rhythms. And yes, that’s the same Hilary Campbell who is the director of the Blossom Street chamber choir, whose album crowdfunder I posted about previously; there are four days left so do support them if you’re going to!

I promised another Ave Regina caelorum, and Carlotta Ferrari’s setting of the Ave Regina caelorum for SSA fits the bill.