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Easter Hymn

HDO 5BR lasstuns LGM
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Product Code: EASHM5BR

Jesus Christ is risen today

Brass quintet, timp, organ, choir, and congregation

Score and parts for EASTER HYMN arranged for the 5-part brass ensemble (two trumpets, two trombones, French horn) and timpani. Includes descant part. Contents include the score in letter format (landscape/horizontal), and parts in normal protrait view. Descant includes verses for both Jesus Christ is risen today (Surrexit Christus hodie) and Christ the Lord is risen today (Wesley).

Price: $35.00

Jesus Christ is risen today
Christ the Lord is risen today

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.

References

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)

Current - Version 16.17.4 / Jan 2024

  • Score converted to 8-1/2 x 11 landscape (easier page turns)
  • Notation stylesheet updated
  • added cues and specific dynamics

Previous Versions

Version 16.17.3 / Sep 2023

  • Revised three bars in descant / organ (v 3)

Version 16.16.3

  • Revised verse 4 brass & organ (refined a congregational cue)
  • Shared trumpet and trombone split to exploded staves

Version 16.15.9

  • Revised verse 4 brass (improve congregational cues)
  • New house score style

16.15.8

  • Revised Prologue
  • Revised Bridge
  • Revised Brass v.4

16.15.3

  • Revised Prologue - first seven measures (previously 10)

16.3.3.3

  • Change to organ in bridge meas. 69-71 (match audio ad lib)

16.3.2

  • Voice leading improvements, all instrumental parts
  • Changes to Timpani part
  • Tuning cues added to Timpani part

16.3.2.2

  • Missing measure repaired
  • Copyist error corrected

1 Jesus Christ is ris'n today, Alleluia!
our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!
who did once upon the cross Alleluia!
suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!

2 Hymns of praise then let us sing Alleluia!
unto Christ our heav'nly King, Alleluia!
who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia!

3 But the pains which he endured, Alleluia!
our salvation have procured; Alleluia!
now above the sky he's King, Alleluia!
where the angels ever sing. Alleluia!

4 Sing we to our God above Alleluia!
praise eternal as his love; Alleluia!
praise him, all ye heav'nly host, Alleluia!
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia!

Surrexit Christus hodie, c. 1000; tr. Jane Eliza Leeson (alt)

Staples can bind the score as seen below, lay-flat, landscape spreads for less than $10 (2023 price). Upload the files, to their website; you can check out as Guest, an account not needed.

hdo bound cover easterhymn

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