lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with easter

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Despite the title, this refers to a scene on Easter evening--the "road to Emmaus," where Jesus appears to some confused disciples, explains how his death was all part of the plan, and blesses their dinner before disappearing. Back in the day the church where I grew up had an "Emmaus Vespers" service on Easter evening but we eventually decided Holy Week was busy enough as it was.

Lines 2 and 6 occasionally give us a feminine rhyme (spoken/broken), but the others are borderline enough it would be hard to call them part of a pattern if you weren't looking. Text is by the prolific Susan Palo Cherwien, and they also suggest Bunessan as an alternate tune.

I...actually did not know this melody was in the hymnal. To explain: a modern composer arranged a slightly more syncopated/jazzy version of this melody, paired with these lyrics, as a choir anthem called "Easter Carol." Later (I think), a different composer wrote new lyrics so it would be about Advent, and put them to that arrangement. Except, she used the same last verse ("King of glory, soul of bliss..."). The creative name for this song is "Advent Carol." Our choir sung both. :P

Anyway, I guess it's also a hymn. Neat..

Similar to 371, this is plainsong with loose verse markers. I would say it's a little more structured, in that each of the verses ends with a matching "Alleluia!" and there's some melody repetition among the verses. (I guess this makes it one for the "trailing alleluias" category, although the arrangers gave up and went with "Peculiar Meter" for the tune.)

Not familiar with this one. It appears to be a plainsong chant from about the turn of the millennium (not this one, the previous one!), with three different "verses" of varying lengths. There are some rhymes, but no real "scheme" since it's so irregular. "that combat stupendous" referring to the clash of life and death is pretty great. It also goes down to low A, which feels pretty low for plainsong.

The hymn tune is the original German title, "Christ lag in Todesbanden."

The allusion in verse 3 is to the Passover narrative; not only is the Passover festival the context for the Easter events, but Christians also draw parallels between the Passover lamb and Jesus as the Lamb of God. The hyphenated offset of "so strong God's love!" is also a weird touch, this may be an example of translation by committee silliness. The image of "death's gray shell" is also a weird one; was that shoehorned in to get the rhyme with "hell"? Death is like a scorpion whose sting is gone and it just has an exoskeleton floating around? Mario Kart allusion 500 years early? Someone help me with this.

This is in the same category as 365 of "7777, trailing alleluias," and even the first line is essentially the same. They do have different melodies, though.

Final verse is kind of the same as the second verse. The third verse is where the grammar gets a little twisted: "God and sinners reconciled" is the same phrasing we find in "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing." Except in the latter, the angels are rattling off a bunch of things they're singing about: "glory...peace...mercy...[reconciliation]." Here, it looks like it's trying to form a complete sentence: "Christ...reconciled...God and sinners." It goes on with "when contending [in a struggle/contest with each other] death and life met in strange and awesome [awe-inspiring rather than "super neat"] strife." It's a cool image, even if it's definitely forced to get the rhyme in there.

How's the rhyme scheme?

Pretty dense--it's lines of 8 syllables, but they mostly rhyme internally. (delight/unite, etc.) That does mean there's significant repetition (free/he, enemy/see, be/victory, misery/free; jubilation/salvation/nation, adoration/nation/consolation).

I also like the use of "speed" as a verb, not "break the speed limit" but "spread quickly."

Merry Christmas Eve! The Cambridge service of Lessons and Carols was today (nerds), and yes, they did sing the text of "Angels from the Realms of Glory" to the tune I associate with "Angels We Have Heard on High"!

What's the hymn tune/meter?

So, this is slightly more interesting than it looks like at first, but it's one of those "we'll get to it later if we get that far and I remember that this one was weird." The thing to know is that, other than the last line, it's six lines of eight syllables, so "888 888." And that last line is one of those trailing alleluias. The name of the tune is "Lasst uns erfreuen," which appears to be German for "Let us praise." (I'm guessing that's not for this song, it's used for other songs that are more directly praise-esque. Although there's plenty of praise in this one too.)

Is there duplication within those other six lines?

Yes--the line "Christ has triumphed! He is living!" gets repeated a lot, but not always at the same time every verse. (For instance the last verse is essentially 'give God the Father, Son, and Spirit all the glory,' which is a pretty common outro-type line if not in so many words.)

Does this song feature trailing alleluias?

Not only does every verse end with an "alleluia," but also there's a line of "alleluias" for just after the last verse, and the same line just at the beginning! So...yes, definitely. This falls into the category of "with" rather than "and" alleluias.

Where has this been sampled?

A couple Easters my choir sang a big mashup of a bunch of different Easter hymns (and loud over-the-top original additions by the composer), this was one of them. There were some parts for everyone in harmony, some for a soloist, and then some for an ensemble of one each soprano/alto/tenor/bass. So I think towards the end this and another song traded lines, one for the soloist and one for the whole group.

Is the alto part pretty boring?

Actually yeah, but who cares. This is a classic, in part because they have "alleluia" after literally every line. 16 in all if you're counting!

Who's counting?

Often my family (especially when we were kids)--since traditionally you don't sing "alleluia" during Lent, it comes back in a bunch of the Easter liturgy.

Are the lyrics that moving?

Not...really? It just feels like "oh yeah, it's a classic."

At some point I will list all the songs with basically indistinguishable titles, because there are a zillion. I just didn't want to burn that on something like this, and yet, here I am with this famous-ish song and I can't think of anything super unique to say about it. Oh well.

How do you tell this hymn away from about a zillion others with the same name?

This one has a Tanzanian subtitle, which helps. But there are a couple cases of very similar titles, of which this is one. I'll probably talk about that in some future entry if there's even less to say about the song itself.

Is the alto part kind of boring?

It's kind of repetitive, but no more so than the other parts, fairly basic chord structure here.

Does it overlap with the other parts?

Yes indeed! For the first measure (and a couple that repeat it at the beginnings of other lines), all four parts are singing Middle C together.

Does the composer have a cool name?

Bernard Kyamanywa! Tanzania is into consonant clusters.

Tanzanian isn't a language though.

Right, I'm guessing it's a Swahili text but don't quote me on that.

Does this exhibit a Northern-hemisphere bias?

With the winter and spring themes? Yes.

What about the feminine rhymes?

We get "portal" and "mortal" which is pretty neat--I usually only come across reference to "portals" in a speculative-fiction sense, so even if it's probably just referencing the stone in front of the tomb, it gives me a mental image of Jesus radiantly bursting out. The next verse follows that up with "portal/immortal," however (and it's "tomb's dark portal" both times!) and the novelty wears off a little

What about the feminine imagery?

Spring is apparently the "queen of seasons" (see above).

Was this in the predecessor main hymnal (the "green book" or Lutheran Book of Worship)?

Yeah, I think so. Twice even!

What do you mean twice?

Like in a bunch of copies at the church where I (mostly) grew up, I seem to remember a copy of this taped to the inside cover.

Why would they need another copy if it was already in the hymnal?

I don't know. I think it was labeled with verse breakdowns, because there are a lot of them. "1 unison, 2 men, 3 women, 4 choir in parts, 5 organ solo, skip 6, 7 and 8 unison" or something.

But did they do the same arrangement every year? Like for Easter or something?

I don't think so.

Weird.

Yeah.

Or you could just be making this up.

I wouldn't do that to you. Possible I misremembered though.

Does anyone involved have a mysterious or intriguing name?

The music arrangement/adaptation was done by one "X. L. Hartig" in 1833. No first name appears on some quick searches, just "X.L." I think that's pretty neat.

Is this one of the classic Easter songs?

Depends on what you mean. It's not the most common in my experience, but the text is translated from something by John of Damascus in the 700s, so that's kind of classic.

Are there some neat turns of phrase?

Sure. The start of verse three is pretty nice; "Now let the heavn's be joyful, let earth its song begin, the round world keep high triumph and all that dwells therein."

What's the difference between earth and the round world?

I don't know, let's ask John Donne.