Marlyn Jensen The Easter season can encompass more than just one holiday. For example, 2013 was a crazy year, since Easter was so early: Ash Wednesday was the same week as Valentine’s Day…and St. Patrick’s Day was the Sunday prior to Palm Sunday.
3 THEMES IN FEBRUARY: End of winter/Christmas, love theme & VALENTINE’S DAY, start of Lent.
Any of these three themes offer ideas for song selections.
Is your climate still snowy? Be brave: I end carol-playing with songs that show God’s love for us, often into February. This is such a transitional month that can be an interesting meld of themes.
- In the Bleak Midwinter (Christina Rossetti/Gustav Holst: combines winter with love. See verse 4)
- Love Came Down at Christmas (also Christina Rossetti)
- Of the Father’s Love Begotten
- Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendor (amazing lyrics)
- How Deep the Father’s Love for Us
- And Can It Be
LENT: Ash Wednesday until Easter.
Almost any hymnal or online search engine will bring up a list of Lent songs.
What Wondrous Love Is This is one of my favorites, and my particular favorite arrangement is in “After the Rain” by Jeanne Cotter, GIA Publications, Inc. https://www.gcp.org/ Though this is arranged for piano solo, I play the bulk of it on my harp and have a violinist or flutist take the melody. It is hauntingly beautiful with harp! Be prepared for some lever-flipping or pedaling…but it’s well worth it.
Another interesting facet of this hymn is that it is not in a minor key. Though it appears to be in D minor, there is no predictable Bb. It is in D Dorian, which makes a great theory study for students at this time of year. Who knew? There is more than major and minor? Oh, yes…venture into a new territory if you have yet to explore Dorian. By no means is it the final frontier but a strange new mode. Boldly go!
ST. PATRICK’S DAY: think Irish hymns. Be Thou My Vision comes immediately to mind, but did you know St. Patrick wrote a hymn? Visit this site http://old-fashionedcharm.blogspot.com/2011/03/irish-hymns.html for a version that is to the tune Morning Has Broken. I like how the website familyworship.org.uk calls the song a “Celtic-style worship ballad.” This website also has an alternate tune. No matter which tune you choose, if you teach young children ages 2-6 Sunday School, this is a great song to do in March because creating motions is easy. (I recommend Morning Has Broken version for younger ones.)
When I creatively select songs that are not in our Trinity Hymnal, I like to post lyrics on a bulletin board near our sanctuary. If a song is just a pretty melody with unfamiliar lyrics, how is it enhancing worship? So I’ll put a link for you below with sample lyric sheets that I display, as well as a list. If you have room in your bulletin or on an overhead system to post lyrics during an offering or interlude, so much the better!
Numbers in my list are for the Trinity Hymnal, published by Great Commission Publications.
- Be Thou My Vision
- Christ Beside Me: lyrics by St. Patrick, tune = Morning Has Broken
- How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place: tune = St. Columbia; nice harp arrangement in Ray Pool’s “6 Celtic Hymns”
- How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds
- I Cannot Tell (tune = Londonderry; lyrics are incredible)
- The Day of the Lord is at Hand
EASTERTIDE: Easter is not one day but 50. Yes, 50. Note the word “tide.” How fast can you calculate the end date for this year? Guess sometime in May, and you’ll be close. Some years, it is in June.
One of my favorite Easter postludes is the Hallelujah Chorus. “What?” you say. “It’s a Christmas tradition.” Well, I say it was written in the Easter section of the Messiah, so into my Easter repertoire it goes.
(In the PCA tradition, every Sunday celebrates Christmas & Easter…so technically, you could play it any Sunday of the year, if not every Sunday.)
Want to contemporize a fabulous hymn? See if you can get a copy of Word Music’s “Risen With Him” choral arrangement. It melds an upbeat, syncopated new melody superimposed over Christ The Lord Is Risen Today. Yep. It is SO neat! Learned it at a small church at the foot of one of Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks.