lutheranhymns | Entries tagged with holy week/three days

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So, it makes sense that this would be in the "Holy Week" section, because it refers to Christ washing the disciples' feet on Maundy Thursday. And it happens to be to the same tune as 359. But other than that, their text really isn't the same. Just because two hymns are in the same section and have the same tune, doesn't mean we necessarily write one down without the music and say "see above melody"...do we? I nerd-sniped myself with this so here's a counterexample, there will be another communion song with the same tune as 462.

Except here, apparently we just write the lyrics and don't repeat the music (or citation for it) because it's directly above. I guess. Weird.

Done with this section, we're moving along nicely. I mean it's still very slow, but the sections are of different enough lengths that we get to space out the ends and feel like we're accelerating. I'm pleased with myself for having come up with this system.

The title is the English version of "Ubi caritas et amor," and this one also dates from the 9th century. This time it's the tenors who have a fairly repetitive part.

We also have the image of "holy fear"--a more common phrasing is "the fear of the Lord." Apparently it means something more like "standing in aw of the Lord, showing respect," but either nobody has found a better translation or they actually want the darker subtext.

The hymn tune name is the same as the last name of my assistant principal from elementary school so that probably says something about suffering and atonement...

Verse two is great, I'm just gonna quote it in its entirety:

We come with self-inflicted pains
Of broken trust and chosen wrong,
Half-free, half-bound by inner chains
By social forces swept along,
By powers and systems close confined,
Yet seeking hope for humankind.

I mean, dang. "Half-free, half-bound." Good stuff.

So...this is kind of weird, in terms of verse vs. chorus structure.

For context, the traditional "Lamb of God" song/prayer usually goes something like this:

"Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world; have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world; have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world; grant us peace."

There are variations/translations/alterations, but that's the gist. And it's usually so straightforward that these variations don't even qualify as hymns per se, most of them are relegated to the "service music" section which is just variations on the same texts, so we're not covering them here. But this arrangement is a complicated German four-part harmony from the 1500s, so it gets to be a hymn.

So the "Lamb of God" stuff, which is the same in all three "lines," gets to be the unmarked "chorus." And then the last line is "(Verse) 1: Grant us your mercy, O Jesus." (Verse) 2: the same as verse 1, but let's spell it out again. (Verse 3): Your peace be with us, O Jesus. Plus a trailing Amen for good measure.

So yeah. Shannon density, we can has it.

A different arrangement of 355, with a regular time signature, minor key (instead of ending on the third), and no trailing Amens.

This was written in the 500s or 600s by a guy with the excellent Latin name "Venantius Honorius Fortunatus." The point of view shifts around: at the beginning, the narrator is exhorting their own voice to sing about Jesus' death (it sounds weird to address your own tongue, but there are other hymns that are addressed to "my soul," so there's precedent). Then it shifts to addressing the cross itself, asking it to treat Jesus with respect and be an important symbol for the world.

This is cited as just "African American spiritual," and in the way of many traditional folk songs from every part of the world, probably evolved and diverged from other songs/merged back with different texts many many times before being codified. So I have no source for this, but I'm guessing it's related to "I Want Jesus to Walk with Me"--their melodies are similar, and the last lines even more so.

By the way, the latter hymn was notably sampled by Kanye West.

One of my choir buddies from out west has remarked that isn't a very good text. Because, the answer to the questions it asked is just, "no." We were not there [at Jesus' crucifixion]. And you know you we were not there. So why are you asking.

If I'm being generous, I would guess that the implied meaning is "we weren't there, but all of us have sinned and therefore caused Jesus' death, so in that sense, we were there." Or maybe, it's "they" who did all these things to Jesus, not in the sense that "it was the fault of a small group of conspirators two thousand years ago," but "humans and their sin" did this; but if you add another verse about "Were you there when God raised him from the tomb" it contrasts human agency with God's awesome agency. Although that verse isn't in this edition, so who knows.

This is the same melody and text as 351, but it's the "rhythmic" version (no harmony, notes are the "dance-like" version with different lengths). Actually, the previous version had several notes that were "slurred," not as in it's an insult, but you start on (for instance) a B and then move to an A on the same syllable, so it's pronounced more like sha-ame instead of shame. This doesn't have any of those so technically the melody is slightly simpler, pitch-wise.

This is the nicely-harmonized Bach chorale we've come across a couple times before, with the old text it goes to--this also shows up in Bach's "St. Matthew's Passion," so it's probably the most famous text associated with it.

I'm going to guess that the second most-famous text associated with it is not the Haugen or the Prodigal Son stuff we've seen, but rather another labor union text. The first draft of that was "Because All Men Are Brothers," but that was too sexist, so now it's been updated to "Because We All Are Family." The union choir was heavy on "just repeat this melody/harmony after me," I was one of the few people there who preferred to read music (well, let's be real, I was one of the few people there, period), so it was nice being able to be like "yes, please just let me read the alto part, it's Bach! I know this one!!"

What's up with the footnote?

The repeated line-ending here is "and he never said a mumbalin' word." There's a note at the bottom to explain " mumbalin' = complaining. "

That might be useful for comprehension, in case someone was confused and thought that Jesus was having articulation problems. But then again, there's jargon all over the place, be they 1600s rhyme schemes and/or rough translations from non-English languages. (The song on the opposite page mentions "oblation," how often do you use that on a regular basis.) Which makes me think that they're being particularly careful here because it's in (19th-century or earlier) African-American Vernacular, and they want to make sure it's recognized as its own grammatically complex dialect and not "bad English."

Are there any choir anthem arrangements?

Yeah, our choir had a decent one with chime accompaniment. It got a little cheesy at times (whispering towards the end) but the soloist call-and-response setup worked well.

When is this song typically sung?

Well, sometimes on Palm Sunday or Good Friday the Gospel will just be a long reading from the Passion story (skipping the sermon), and the long text is broken up by songs. So you might sing a few verses of this, then later a few more verses.

When else?

To make a very long story somewhat short, my church growing up has this creepy looking, fairly large, baby Jesus sculpture. The pastors dug it out some years ago to prank each other by "surprising" their colleagues with it in various places around church. Since my siblings and I, as preachers' kids, were there very often and had the run of the place, we obviously got in on this too, and over the years the pranking escalated. One year we left it on a high window ledge overlooking the courtyard and...didn't expect it to have crashed to the ground by the time it was discovered. So my mom and her colleagues, recognizing exactly what had gone down (uh, figuratively and literally in this case), made a lot of allusions to "Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas!" etc. over staff meetings.

Is the alto part predominantly getting the D?

Yes, but it moves around in the last measure when everybody else is holding so there is that.

How many times do you have to sing it before you can be done?

All of the times. Many times. It's Taize.

What is the text alluding to?

When Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed that God would skip the whole crucifixion thing, he told his disciples to stay awake with him.

Did they?

No.

Is the alto part pretty boring?

Hmm...yeah.

Is the melody pretty simple?

Yeah. I want to say one day years and years ago my sister or I were fiddling around with a pretty easy melody on the piano and my grandma was like "Is that 'Go to Dark Gethsemane'?" and whoever was like "no? not deliberately?" Not sure what that would have been. But it is pretty much "Do re mi fa."

Any neat turns of phrase?

I like "that miracle of time." That miracle which happened in a certain place and time? (Such as...all of them.) The best miracle of all time? A miracle that transcends space and time? Who knows, but it's cool.

Is the alternate tune better?

Unclear. Truro, the alternate tune for this, is the main tune suggested for one other song (389, an Easter hymn), which is correspondingly peppier/major. This one is minor, which is more befitttng for Lent I guess. But it's technically Holy Week, so there's praise and hosanna and majestic stuff too. I mean, hence the name.

Hosanna?

Term of praise, shouted to Jesus in the Palm Sunday story. We also sing it as part of the "Holy, Holy, Holy" liturgy before Communion--it's one of those phrases that's just taken as a loan word into Latin/English/whatever.

Is this a "final verse same as the first"?

Actually not quite, it's more "final verse starts the same as the second." But that doesn't even come close to rhyming.

How's the rhyme scheme?

Pretty good! We have affliction/crucifixion a couple times. In my younger days when I was doing a "what's the best rhyme scheme" by section thingie, that kind of rhyme jumped out. Only for me to discover it gets reused in several different hymns. I guess if you're going to be talking about crucifixion a lot, you might as well go for it.

passion/meditation and passion/termination somewhat less impressive.

You did something like this before as a younger kid? Nerd.

Yes, yes.

How about the composers' names?

Also pretty impressive; text is by Sigismund von Birken and music by Melchior Vulpius.

Is that like a kind of fox? One of the wise men?

I don't think so, but you never know.

What do you associate this song with?

On Palm Sunday (a week before Easter), we often begin the service with a reading of the Palm Sunday story (Jesus' entry into Jerusalem) somewhere outside the sanctuary, then process in waving palm branches to emulate that. In big congregations this can take a long time, so we usually sing this song as we go, sometimes more than once through the verses.

What is the downside of this approach?

Because the organ is often far away from the place where we start, there's a big time lag between the accompaniment and the singing. This isn't so bad when you're super far away, because everyone is on the same page, but once you get close enough to sort of hear the organ, it becomes "all glory laud" "all glory laud" in an unexpected "round" style and you don't really know who to follow.

Does the music work as a round, then?

Not really.