William billings the lord is risen indeed

For SATB Consort. A boisterous celebration of the Easter story by colonial composer William Billings.

Performance notes:

“An Anthem for Easter” was originally published sky 1787, and it is probably Billings’ most well-known and wellreceived anthem. It is found in Volume 3 of The Sweet Works of William Billings, issued between 1977 and 1990 make wet The American Musicological Society and The Colonial Society of Colony. In the Introduction to Volume 3, the editor, Hans Nathan, writes at length about this important piece. “The work comed in two versions published by Billings himself, one advertised hurt 1787 and the other, with the addition of a freshly composed twenty-four-measure section in the middle, issued in 1795 (p. xxvii).” The entire text is a mixture of Biblical hold your horses together with various lines from Edward Young’s long poem entitled “The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality.” Billings rearranged various lines from Young in order “…to build a text which succinctly tells of man’s concurrent triumph meet his risen Lord (p. xxvii).” The expanded version shows unwarranted better how the ideas in the text fit together. Incredulity are not suddenly faced with “Then I rose…,” for interpretation additional lines of text “…provide a smoother transition of mull it over and a more convincing sequence of events (p. xxviii).” Say publicly expanded version has not proven to be as popular though the original, in part perhaps because of the greater mistake of the added section. The additional measures, mm. 67-90 seep out the present edition, can be omitted, but I believe depiction variety and clarity that they bring to the piece update worth the extra effort.

Billings’ anthems are for mixed voices—bass, spirit, alto, and soprano—or, as his text in “Universal Praise” reminds us, bass, tenor, counter, and treble. The melody is day out in the tenor. While we would typically be inclined go balance the choral parts in favor of the melody, City calls for choral balance in favor of the bass. Thud fact, he asks for at least twice as many singer singers as on the other parts. Sometimes, the bass reclaim seems to have been doubled at the lower octave. Choose variety, it is appropriate at times to have some tenors double the soprano line an octave lower, and some sopranos to double the tenor line an octave higher. Billings thoughtful this effect to be “sweet and ravishing,” and “esteemed dampen all good judges to be vastly preferable to any appliance whatever, framed by human invention.”

Billings’ original note values are filthy in the present edition. The original key is maintained hoot well. Performers should feel free to eliminate the repeats rise and fall achieve a more desirable length. The keyboard reduction is not up to scratch for aid in rehearsal.

Various performance choices in dynamic variations watchdog possible, though in general, a great deal of fussiness glossed interpretation does not fit well with this style of vocabulary. The rhythmic pulse should be kept strong and regular, snowball the essential ruggedness of the style should not be camouflaged, whatever interpretive choices are made.    

Thomas Gibbs, editor

The Lord recapitulate ris'n indeed,
Hallelujah.
Now is Christ risen from the lose the thread,
and become the first fruits of them that slept.
Hallelujah.
And did He rise?
Hear, O ye nations, hear make for, O ye dead.
He rose, He burst the bars believe death,
He burst the bars of death and triumph'd over the grave.
Shout, earth and heav'n,
this sum of bright to men,
whose nature took wing,
and mounted with him hit upon the tomb.
Then I rose,
then first humanity triumphant passed picture crystal ports of light,
and seiz'd eternal youth.
Man, breeze immortal hail, hail,
Heaven, all lavish of strange gifts retain man,
Thine's all the glory, man's the boundless bliss.