There’s a saying among church musicians: A good hymn-writer can teach us plenty of things, but George Herbert teaches us that good hymns can also be good poetry. Indeed, look up his name in an English hymnal, and you’ll find the pages to his hymns more worn out than others.

There is a ton of great music written for Easter – no surprise there. But like hymnody, it’s hard to find music that captures the joy of the season without going overboard into a sea of shallowness. The “Hallelujah Chorus” is just too much for me. Thank goodness for George Herbert’s poetry, set by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Happy Easter!

The final movement of Bach‘s St. Matthew Passion is a tearful lullaby to Jesus: “rest sweetly, good night!” There is a figure that Bach uses over and over again to emulate the sound of sobbing – you can hear it clearly at 2:26, but it is found throughout the piece.

But the best part of this piece is the 7-8 suspension that happens at every important cadence!

if you have no idea what that means, let me explain:

A cadence is a stopping point. A suspension is when you expect a certain note at a certain time, but the composer delays that certain note to intensify the feeling of resolve that you get when you finally hear said note.

So, at 4:48, we expect to hear:
sol fa me re DO

but instead we hear:
sol fa me re TI DO

And that TI, it hurts, but it hurts so good.

This version is very tastefully done. If I ever get to conduct this piece, I assure you I will make that suspension as tasteless as possible.

As it is the most important week of the year for Christians, it’s no surprise that there is a ton of music out there written for Holy Week.

For me, there is no better music for this week than the St. Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. I could easily write a blog post for every single movement in this oratorio; I will restrain myself, however, and just give you a few, and use as few words as possible (there’s so much to say, though!)

“Mache dich, mein Herze, rein” is an aria which is sung in the narrative after Jesus has died, and Joseph of Arimathea has taken his body and put it in his personal tomb. In typical baroque pietist fashion, the flowery poetry of the aria makes a metaphor of giving the personal space of one’s heart over to Christ. The music is a pastorale, drawing up images of Elysian fields, perfect pastures.