Easter Anthem (William Billings)

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• (Posted 2024-12-01)  CPDL #82944:         

Editor: Barry Johnston (submitted 2024-12-01).   Score information: 7 x 10 inches (landscape), 5 pages, 103 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: As revised by Billings in 1795. Transcribed from Harmony of Harmony (Jacob French), 1802. Note heads in four-shape format.

• (Posted 2010-09-25)  CPDL #22281: 

Editor: Michael Lauer (submitted 2010-09-11).   Score information: Letter, 5 pages, 127 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: Includes section added after initial publication.

• (Posted 2007-12-11)  CPDL #15640: 

Editor: Michael Lauer (submitted 2007-12-11).   Score information: Letter, 6 pages, 152 kB   Copyright: Personal

Edition notes: Includes section added after initial publication.

• (Posted 1999-05-28)  CPDL #00035:        (Finale 1998)

Editor: Rafael Ornes (submitted 1999-05-28).   Score information: Letter, 5 pages, 88 kB   Copyright: CPDL

Edition notes: revised 07-Apr-2000.

General Information

Title: Easter Anthem
First Line: The Lord is risen indeed
Composer: William Billings
Lyricist: Edward Young

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Sacred, Anthem

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 1787 as a separate; see Works published separately 1787-1790 (Kroeger 1986), no. 1
    2nd published: 1802 in Harmony of Harmony (Jacob French), p. 131
Description: Published as a separate, but usually found bound with Billings' Suffolk Harmony (1786). Billings wrote a revised version in 1795, to include a whole new 24-measure section, "Shout, shout, earth and heaven … and mounted with him from the tomb" (Kroeger 1987). An 1802 book by one of Billings' students, Jacob French, includes the revised version. The version in The Sacred Harp (p. 235 from 1844, p. 236 after 1960) does not include the 1795 additions.

References

• Kroeger, Karl, Editor. 1986. The complete works of William Billings, Volume III. Brunswick, Maine: American Musicological Society, 399 pp.
• Kroeger, Karl. 1987. William Billings' Anthem For Easter: The Persistence of an Early American "hit". Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 1987, pp. 105-128.
• Young, Edward. 1782. The Poetical Works of the Reverend Edward Young, Vol. II. Edinburgh: The Martins.
• Young, Edward. 1870. The Complete Poetical Works of Edward Young, with Life. Edinburgh: Gall and Inglis.

Original text and translations

Text arranged from the Bible and Edward Young's The Complaint, or Night Thoughts, Night Four, 1741-44. Bracketed text was added by Billings in 1795.

English text

The Lord is risen indeed, Hallelujah. (from Luke 24:34)

Now is Christ risen from the dead,
and become the first fruits of them that slept. (1 Corinthians 15:20)
Hallelujah.

And did He rise?
Hear, O ye nations, hear it, O ye dead.
He rose, He burst the bars of death,
He burst the bars of death (Night Thoughts 4:271-273)
and triumphed o'er the grave.

[Shout, shout, earth and heaven!
This sum of good to man:
Whose nature then took wing,
and mounted with him from the tomb.]
Then I rose,
then first humanity triumphant passed the crystal ports of light,
and seized eternal youth. (Night Thoughts 4:288-293)

Man, all immortal hail, hail,
Heaven, all lavish of strange gifts to man,
Thine's all the glory, man's the boundless bliss. (Night Thoughts 4:298-300)