Descant to the hymn tune EASTER HYMN. Free score with harmonized descant.choir part, and ad lib prologue. In this audio: Prologue, hymnal verse, and harmonized descant. Score with parts and passagework for brass quintent, timpani and organ also available. Free score. 

The tune EASTER HYMN was first published in the 1708 volume, Lyra Davidica, with the title The Resurrection. The composer is unknown. The older of the two English texts commonly sung to this tune, 'Jesus Christ is risen today,' is based on a 14th C. Latin hymn found in a manuscript from Munich, Surrexit Christus hodie, the English translation hewing closely to the original. A later manuscript from Breslau includes a verse - Mulieres o tremulae - alluding to the first witnesses, the women who came to the tomb:

Haste ye women from your fright
take to Galiliee your flight.
To the sad disciples say
Jesus Christ is risen today.

Unlike the staid metrical psalm settings predominating English hymnody, EASTER HYMN incorporates more variety, with melismatic Alleluias assigned to the congregation. The tune is English in origin, appearing first in tune-and-bass score only, which would not be unusual in the figured bass era, and later as a faburden (tune in the tenor). It was immediately popular, and other musical adaptations were common until it took its final form in Hymns Ancient & Modern (1861). The first English translation appeared together with the tune, and underwent several modifications, concluding with the additon of a doxology in 1882. Charles Wesley wrote the the text 'Christ the Lord is risen today' in 1739 in A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music, As They Are Commonly Sung at the Foundery, an abandoned facility that was the home of London's first Wesleyan congregation, the prosody more consonant with the pietistic sensibilities of the time, less didactic than its ancient forbear.

[Instrumental version for brass quintet and timpani, with prologue and bridge available.]

Credits / sources
Glory to God: A Companion, Carl P. Daw Jr. (Louisville, Kentucky : Westminster John Knox Press, 2016)
Lyra Davidica (1708), Archive.org, p.11
An Annotated History of Hymns, J.R. Watson, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Updated: Oct 2022 - corrected a single parallel that resulted in a lot of notes moving around.

This tune was the setting for the Easter hymn, Lasst uns erfreuen herzlich sehr, which celebrates the resurrection narrative from the perspective of Mary. It first appeared in the Jesuit hymnal Ausserlesene Catholische Geistliche Kirchengesänge (Cologne, 1623, ed. Friedrich Spee), and the setting quickly produced variants regarding the distribution of the alleluias. German literature usually attributes authorship of both the text and the tune to the collection's editor. As a poet and hymnologist, the attribution to him of the text is plausible; however there are no first-hand references to support an assertion of composition. Moreover, opening phrase comes from a 1525 hymn tune, GENEVAN 68 / OLD 113TH ^.[1]  Authoritative English language sources rarely cite the earlier provenance, although a thoroughly-researched discussion can be found on the  Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland website.

Ye watchers and ye holy ones is a text of particularly Anglo-Catholic gravitas by Athelstan Riley which first appeared in the English Hymnal (1906). It was based on the 3rd C.Te deum and 4th C. Axion estin,² a Greek hymn to Mary opening with familiar words to Anglican Book of Common Prayer, "It is truly meet..." The hymn All creatures of our God and King is a paraphrase of St. Francis' Cantico di frate sole, a 'laude' written not in Latin but in vernacular Italian; it is sometimes refered to as Canticle of the Sun.³ It was rendered into English verse by William Henry Draper (1855-1933) for a procession at a children’s festival prior to it's publication in The Public School Hymn Book (1919), and is one of the best loved hymn settings across many denominations. Despite erroneous attrubutions to others, the anonymous 9th C. Frankish office hymn, Aurora lucis rutilat became Light's glittering morn from John Mason Neale's prolific works of translation.⁴ It has been configured into three subsequent hymns, e.g., "That Easter day with joy was bright," and some thumb-puzzle reconfigurations into other versions.

A congregational arrangement for two trumpets, two trombones, horn and timpani is available,including a Paschal version with the text from the 9th C. hymn, 'Light's glittering morn bedecks the sky.' It can be prepared with any text, and produced in US or A4 format. Link to audio demo of the brass version.