Easter Hymn

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Easter Hymn

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Jesus Christ is risen today

Score and parts instrumental arrangements: Strings (Quintet or Ensemble), 5-part brass ensemble and timpani with full descant, or two trumpets / two trumpets and strings with cadential descant. Score in concert pitch, trumpet parts in both B♭ transposition and C. Important revision to brass quintet Jan 2026; previous buyers can log in to download the updated package at no cost.

Easter Hymn (String Quintet)

$35.00

Strings - Quintet or Ensemble and Organ

Score and parts
New 2026

Easter Hymn (Brass 5tet)

$35.00

Brass quintet, timpani, and organ

Score and parts
Updated Jan 2026

Easter Hymn (Two Trumpets and String Quartet)

$35.00

Two Trumpets and String Quartet

Score and parts
New 2026

Easter Hymn (Two Trumpets)

$18.50

Two trumpets and organ

Score and parts
New 2026

Description

Jesus Christ 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. Because the number of verses and the prosody for the Wesley text is so varied, we will set your preferred text in this arrangement and set a separate link for you when complete (less than forty-eight hours).

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)

Editions

Verses

Binding

Five Easter Pieces

For Brass Quintet and Timp
or Two Trumpets
with congregation, choir, and organ.

Easter Hymn

Easter Hymn