Exploring Two Easter Hymns
USUALLY on the day after Halloween, Christmas carols can be heard piped throughout North American shopping malls and stores. We are exposed to seven weeks of Christmas music celebrating the Incarnation but rarely more than seven days of Easter hymns, and then only at Church and possibly in the concert hall. Rightly, Lent is a penitential season but after Easter could there not be more time to sing out our joy in Christ’s Resurrection and our redemption? Easter is our great high feast, after all, yet it gets scant air play even in the Church.
To help us appreciate this music further, we have asked two accomplished musicians, Roseanne Kydd and Chris Hayes, to give us their insights into two of the greatest Easter hymns in our Western tradition.
Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, Alleluia!
By Roseanne Kydd
“Alleluia! Christ is risen,”
“Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!”
Anglican services around the globe will commence Easter Sunday with this rousing liturgical greeting. Then, whether in the finest cathedral processional with pipe organ and florid trumpets or in a store front setting with an acoustic guitar, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” will be sung with forte tones and hearts beating in exultant tempos. What is it about this hymn that has earned it such remarkable staying power and sheer pleasure amid the flux of church music styles?
In 1708 John Baptist Walsh observed that in German music generally “they have such abundance of Divine Songs and Hymns, set to short and pleasant Tunes…” (The Preface from Lyra Davidica). It was in this collection that Charles Wesley found the anonymous melody for his eleven-verse lyrics titled “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” or simply, the Easter Hymn. The perfect marriage of the tune and words came with a more refined “alleluia” to complete each line. The Easter Hymn was first performed on November 11, 1739 at the opening of the Foundry Meeting House, a deserted iron foundry in London, England, purchased by the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, as their Chapel.
Nevertheless you will note that this is not the tune our Anglican Church of Canada’s Common Praise (CP) has selected to accompany Wesley’s lyrics. It was Wesley’s choice of a tune and lacking the strictness of copyright, much freedom has been taken in using musical settings that accommodated the metre of “7777 with alleluias.” The tune, Llanfair, was adopted for the 1998 Common Praise hymnary, its immediate antecedent being the Red Book (the official hymn book of the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church, 1971) with its Llanfair version. The melody Wesley preferred for his own “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” was translated and preserved in its 1816 revision as “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.”
What can be said about Llanfair? (See CP 206.) It consists of four lines of music to correspond to the 4 lines of each verse. The second and fourth music lines are identical with the first line above, the “alleluias” in the last 2 bars of each line contrasting in shape and rhythm to the steady beats of quarters note. The opening 2 notes are the same and the next 2 notes are also identical, 2 Fs and 2 As. This repetition creates a static effect, the very opposite of what a musical depiction of our resurrected Lord calls for. The third line provides a divergence of melody while keeping the same basic rhythmic pattern. By itself it is a pleasing enough melody, nonetheless, its sameness works against the great variety of meaning expressed by Wesley’s text. For example, the opening 2 measures have to depict both “Soar we now where Christ has led” and “Ours the cross, the grave, the skies” (verse 4), two very different ideas. (This particular verse is missing from the Blue Hymnal of 1938.)
How does the Lyra Davidica tune, first chosen by Wesley to accompany his “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” serve to enhance the text? (See CP 203.) The same musical structure of 4 lines, broken into 2 measures of words and 2 of “alleluia” persist as in Llanfair. There the similarity ends. By employing a shape of immediate ascension, C E G, real momentum is created. The flowing eighth notes of the “alleluia” suggest quickening and intensity, evoking the thrill of what has just been announced – the resurrection! By moving the pitch of the second line upwards, beginning an interval of a 4th higher than the opening C, the momentum continues to build followed by that echoing “alleluia” of the first line. The 3rd line, “Raise your joys and triumphs high” is strong and commanding with the pitch reflecting “Raise” in the ascending notes. The “alleluia,” also now pitched higher, calls forth a louder “alleluia” of praise reflexively. The last line, the 4th, sets aside the established quarter note pattern with unanticipated eighth notes, sending the voice to do what the words call for: “sing, ye heavens and earth, reply.” The final “alleluia” circling in eighth notes seems to put on the brakes as it brings each verse to a close.
Of the 34 YouTube performances of “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” only three employ the Llanfair tune. All the others retain the Lyra Davidica selection. In addition to what may be seen as a better musical fit of the tune selected by Wesley, arguments could be made for simply preserving the artistic integrity of the original marriage. This hymn may have begun its journey in the Anglican Church with Charles Wesley, but it didn’t remain an exclusively Anglican expression for it is far and wide the most popular Easter hymn of all time, making it a pioneering force for hymnal ecumenism. Let us raise our voices in this powerful musical celebration of our risen Lord! TAP
Dr. Roseanne Kydd is Director of Music at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Cobourg, Ontario.
It Is Finished, and It Now Begins:
The Strife is O’er
By Chris Hayes
Just as many teenagers express themselves partly through the music they listen to, so the Church expresses herself by the music her people sing, yet in a more divinely-oriented direction. This is particularly true during key parts of the Church Year, especially at Easter. Our hymns proclaim our faith! Such is the case with the powerful hymn, “The Strife is O’er” (unaccompanied by teenage angst and mood swings!).
Hymnologists will speak of hymns and mean the texts only, most of the time, but this case before us is one whose tune and text together create its identity, at least in most Anglican settings here in Canada. The tune known as Victory comes to us by the hand of the great composer G.P. de la Palestrina, and is used, by some counts, over eighty percent of the time. The text, which started life in Latin, comes to us via the Rev. Francis Pott.
As a scholar and student of hymnology, Mr. Pott seems to have spent a lot of time with his nose in books (not a bad thing, by any stretch!). He found the verses of this hymn in Latin in a book from 1695 called Symphonia Sirenum. (They had appeared in an earlier book by J.M. Neale, who included them in his work Hymni Ecclesiae in 1851, but they seem to be 17th-century words either way). Mr. Pott is known to us in several ways today: he was on the committee that in 1861 produced the hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern, and is credited with hymns we continue to sing today, including “Forty Days and Forty Nights,” and “Angel Voices, Ever Singing.” Educated at Oxford, he served as a curate and rector in Sussex, England. Deafness, sadly, forced his retirement in 1891. He later died in Kent, in 1909.
During his curacies, the hymn at hand was written. It first appeared in this form in a book he wrote called Hymns Fitted to the Order of Common Prayer, published in 1861. Each of the five verses proclaims Christ’s victory over death, or some part of it, and then our response to it. There is much imagery of battle between our Lord and the devil, or Jesus and “death’s mightiest powers.” It is a song of triumph, a song of victory. Though increasingly it is sung at the beginning of worship services, it makes a strong and declamatory final theological expression by being sung at the end of a worship service. Jesus has won!
As mentioned earlier, the tune that is most often sung to this hymn comes from Palestrina–more specifically from the Gloria Patri of the Magnificat. William Monk adapted the tune for use with the text of the hymn, adding the three “alleluias” at the end. Remembering that the word “Alleluia” has not been heard in the Church throughout Lent, we now hear and sing it often and triumphantly, at the beginning three times, and then at the end three times. It makes a rather noteworthy and fitting bookmark for this hymn. Interestingly, this is a beloved hymn of handbell choirs! (As an aside, this hymn is sometimes sung to the tune, Gelobt sei Gott, from a tune by Melchior Vulpius).
Regardless of the tempo, sing this hymn with heart, with energy, with gusto! In doing so, you will be making a strong declaration of your Christian faith. TAP
The Rev. Chris Hayes is the Priest and Rector of the Parish of Salisbury & Havelock, in New Brunswick, and is also the Administrative Director of the Diocesan Choir School there each summer. He gets by each day by God’s grace, his family, the beauty of music, and his workshop.
