This post grew from Palm Sunday to Easter, as I added music for each day of Holy Week, plus links to passages in the New Testament Gospels about each day (except Wednesday).
(I’m using embedded YouTube videos for the music. For most of you that means adds, usually skippable. Sorry about that.)
Music for Holy Week
Palm Sunday
I remember visiting Old Jerusalem, walking through its gates, viewing it from the Mount of Olives. My time there wasn’t quite the same as the New Testamant describes, but for me it was a remarkable day.
Here Stanford Olsen, an acclaimed veteran of the Metropolitan Opera, sings “The Holy City” with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. I remember singing this splendid anthem as a teenager in a much smaller choir. I recall hearing my father-in-law sing it too.
If you want to read some scripture about Palm Sunday, here are some links:
Holy Monday
For Holy Monday, “O God Beyond All Praising,” by The Georgia Boy Choir Festival Choir.
This hymn is more about the week than the day. There are probably some hymns out there about the barren fig tree and the second cleaning of the temple, but I’d rather enjoy this one.
Michael Perry’s lyrics are copyrighted, so read them here. This arrangement moves some things around and omits a few lines—but now you know that, so you can avoid confusion.
The Gospel readings for Holy Monday are:
Holy Tuesday
Tuesday’s selection looks forward to some of Thursday’s most beautiful teachings, which only John recorded. (Gethsemane will draw my attention on Thursday.) Here is the King James Version of the text:
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
“In my Father’s are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
“And if I go I will prepare a place for you, and come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
“And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. . . .
“Let not you heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
“And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. . . .
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but my me.
“If he had known me, ye should have known my Father also. . . .
“The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubed, neither let it be afraid.
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you.” (John 14:1–7, 26–28)
Today’s selection uses a different translation; hence the text is “In my Father’s house are many dwellings.” Here is “My Father’s House” by a choir at Martin Luther College in Wisconsin.
Gospel readings from Holy Tuesday are extensive, but there are none from Holy Wednesday. You may as well save half for tomorrow.
- Matthew 21:20–46; 22; 23; 24
- Mark 11:20–33; 12; 13; 14:1–2, 28
- Luke 20; 21; 22:1–6
- John 12:20–43
There are treasures aplenty here, including a sermon on faith, prayer, and forgiveness; some parables; rendering unto Caesar that which bears his image, and to God that which bears his; the two great commandments; the widow’s mite; and more. I suppose I might have found some music for some of it, but I didn’t. There’s nothing stopping you, of course.
Holy Wednesday
There is no account the the Gospels of what Jesus did on Wednesday of Holy Week. Today’s music celebrates something he’ll say on Thursday: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Craig Courtney’s beautiful “There Will I Be” combines this passage with famous words from Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried” (Ruth 1:16–17).
On YouTube my favorite recording of “There Will I Be” is audio only, by Soli Dei Gloria, a splendid ensemble in Colorado Springs, Colorado. If you’d rather see the singers themselves (and the pianist), there’s also a Bernards High School Choir from Bernardsville, New Jersey.
Maundy Thursday
Beyond even Thursday’s wondrous teachings and other events, Thursday evening brings the atoning agonies of Gethsemane, which, combined with Friday’s agonies on the cross and Sunday’s resurrection, comprise the center point in time for us all.
Here a children’s choir, assembled for a session of the October 2024 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sings a children’s hymn, “Gethsemane.”
Thursday’s readings in the Gospels are extensive, including some beloved chapters from John:
Good Friday
. . . is an odd name for a day which began with an illegal trial and a brutal flogging—39 strokes with a multi-thonged whip, into which pieces of bone and metal were woven, because the law forbid 40 strokes—and a continued with crucifixion and burial. Odd, except that from such great evil came the greatest good. We might sing of the meeting of infinite love and infinite sorrow.
I have two choral settings of the same text for you; perhaps you’ll love them both. I think the text merits the repetition. It’s not just about the crucifixion; it’s about taking it personally.
Here’s a choir from St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, Australia, singing “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” to a tune to which it is often sung.
I love even more the Gilbert Martin choral arrangement, which I had the pleasure of conducting once or twice. Here the singers are a large festival choir in Pasadena, California, at the Lake Avenue Church. The organ accompaniment, played here by the noted Frederick Swann, is stunning.
The Gospel readings on Good Friday are these:
Holy Saturday
For the Saturday between the crucifixion and Eastern morning, we look back musically to the crucifixion. Here’s a talented tenor, Victor Trent Cook, in a striking performance of “Were You There?”
There’s just one small reading in the Gospel for this day:
Easter
Easter is arguably the holiest day in Christianity. I have four musical performances for you, and it was hard enough to settle on those. Then, of course, the Gospel readings are substantial. Happy Easter!
First, to me the most essential piece of Easter music is a simple, familiar hymn—except that it’s more glorious than simple, when a certain choir, organ, and orchestra do it, especially when they’re joined by herald trumpets. If anything in the universe ever deserved fanfare, Easter does.
Second, a combined choir from Brigham Young University sings “Behold the Wounds in Jesus Hands,” another beautiful choral work I had the joy of conducting once or twice with a smaller choir (certainly not this one). If you know the climactic chapters of the Book of Mormon, you’ll see that this hymn puts us in the shoes of some people around the world from Jerusalem, not long after Jesus’ resurrection (3 Nephi 11:5–17). But it works as well for more broadly familiar scenes at Jerusalem, as told by Luke (24:36-40) and John (20:19–20), and Thomas’ similar moment about a week later (John 20:24–29).
We could scarcely go an entire Holy Week, celebrating music, without turning at least once to George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Here soprano Maya Kherani sings “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth” with Boston Baroque.
Finally (which I grant is a breach of chronology, because Eastern comes to Russia hours before it reaches me, for example), here are a brief Russian Orthodox chant and bells. The text is in Church Slavonic, the Russian Orthodox liturgical language. In translation it is approximately this:
Of thy Resurrection, O Christ our Savior,
The angels sing in heaven,
and grant us on earth
to glorify Thee with a pure heart.
For many years I have loved the Russian Orthodox liturgy. I can scarcely think of Easter without it. It’s all a cappella, because for them the human voice is the only instrument worthy to praise God. Notably, unlike much of western Christianity, which seems—at least in practice—to place Christmas at least equal with Easter, in Russian Orthodoxy Easter is far more important, which seems right to me.
Here are the Gospel readings for Easter:
My Thoughts from Easters Past
I write on Easter and related themes occasionally, so there’s an Easter category page here at the blog, if you’re into more reading this week: David Rodeback on Easter.
I promised one more thing, before the week ends. It’s not new, but it may be new to you.
“Thou, Lord”
Several years ago, a friend who planned to compose a hymn asked me to compose a text for it. I wrote the text but didn’t love it. In the end, he didn’t compose the hymn, and I’m okay with that.
In my ecclesiastical labors I became friends with more than a few men who were at least a generation older than me—admirable, Christlike men who knew neither how good they were nor, perhaps, how I treasured our association. The math is relentless; they’ve been dying in recent years. I don’t know why the passing of a particular one of them inspired me to pull out that text I had written—I think I can now fairly say that text I had drafted—but I worked at it again, finally made of it something that pleased me, and dedicated it to him.
To come full circle, my wife, who sometimes composes when she’s not busy performing or teaching, set it to original music (for SATB choir), thus creating one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever. I don’t have a recording of it. Maybe someday. In any case, as I originally intended, it says what I most would wish to say about what happened Thursday night, Friday, and the latter Sunday morning of the holiest (ahem, eight-day) week of the Christian year, and about taking those things personally.
Posted in 2020, “Thou, Lord” is here for you to read, if you wish.
Again, happy Easter!
