Jesus Lives!

Christian Gellert, 1757

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Our Word of the Week is eighth, in honor of the great Eighth Day, Easter, the consummation of the ancient and the instauration of the ever-new. So you might think my mind would be on octaves, and in fact, many churches do celebrate an Octave of Easter, from Easter to the next Sunday inclusive. And we in the west have inherited an octave scale from ancient times. As all you lovers of The Sound of Music know, and as my family and I were reminded of when we went to that garden in Salzburg and the steps that Maria and the children marched up and down, it’s do re mi fa sol la ti do, and that’s the major scale. You can play it with the white keys on the piano, starting with C and ending with the C above. The ancients, I’m told, invented B-flat (if “do” is C), and eventually the other four semitones were included too, giving us the five black keys. But in western music, and in hymnody most of the time, we expect a song to end with the basic note, do, whether at the bottom of the scale or, more rarely and especially for joyful songs, at the top of the scale, at the octave. Well, with our song today we end each stanza with an Alleluia that concludes above the octave, on the third — on the high mi. Of the nearly 700 hymns in our favorite hymnal, it is the only one that does so, and it is glorious, as it’s meant to be, because it’s EASTER, and Christ is risen indeed!

Henry Gauntlett, the composer of the melody (St. Albinus), became the organist at the famous Olney Church when he was nine years old. Read that sentence again. This wasn’t an unknown church in the moors, either. Olney is where the great revivalist John Newton preached. It was where his friend and collaborator the poet William Cowper worshiped. Their book Olney Hymns had gone through 37 editions by 1836. Gauntlett studied law and worked as a lawyer till he was around 40, but all that while he was also composing sacred music and performing it as an organist, in two big churches in London. He built organs. He patented a method of electrifying some of the mechanisms. He composed thousands of sacred melodies: doubtless you know of one: Once in Royal David's City.

I’ve found an article Gauntlett wrote in The Musical World, comparing the organ music of Bach and Handel. Here he says something about Bach that I think shows what he aimed for when he wrote our melody today:

“But Bach as a choral writer is sublime . . . His ideas are finely developed, each clear and distinct, and the whole stands boldly forward. Here, with a mind uncommonly vigorous and active, judgement accurate, apprehension quick, memory tenacious, and attention watchful, he is carried away by the extraordinary facility of his genius: grave and serious; full of power, yet breathing a calm and holy dignity, he is perfectly natural, whilst pouring forth one broad stream of harmony; and, if without seriousness there can be no impassioned music, Bach possessed in a high degree this characteristic.”

In miniature, that’s St. Albinus. Grave and serious? The first line of each stanza is sung in unison. Breathing a calm and holy dignity? The second and fourth lines rhyme in the poem and so they rhyme in the melody too, with stately half notes, descending. Judgment accurate? Each of the four lines in the melody reflects the others, mostly 1 with 3 and 2 with 4, but all are interlaced without anything exaggerated or fussy, ending on the tonic note, B flat, high in the scale. And then comes the simple, soaring Alleluia. Maestro!

Gauntlett has written a masculine sort of melody and arrangement for a poem that says, boldly, at the beginning of every stanza, “Jesus lives!” What does that mean for us? We defy the grave — it “cannot enthrall us.” We may tremble as our bodily life flickers out, but we say that death is now “the gate of life immortal.” Jesus died for us — then to him be the glory forever. He died and he lives — and, as Saint Paul said, nothing can “tear us from his keeping ever” — nothing, not “life, nor death, nor powers of hell.” Jesus lives — and his is the ultimate triumph. If we are tempted to think of the universe as a vast machine running down, know instead that to Jesus “the throne / Over all the world is given.” Life and not death is brooding on the waters. He goes before us to prepare a place.

Jesus lives! thy terrors now
Can no longer, death, appall us;
Jesus lives! by this we know
Thou, O grave, canst not enthrall us.  Alleluia!

Jesus lives! henceforth is death
But the gate of life immortal;
This shall calm our trembling breath
When we pass its gloomy portal.  Alleluia!

Jesus lives! for us he died;
Then, alone to Jesus living,
Pure in heart may we abide,
Glory to our Savior giving.  Alleluia!

Jesus lives! our hearts know well
Naught from us his love shall sever;
Life, nor death, nor powers of hell
Tear us from his keeping ever.  Alleluia!

Jesus lives! to him the throne
Over all the world is given:
May we go where he has gone,
Rest and reign with him in heaven.  Alleluia!

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six days each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs. as well. Paid subscribers receive audio-enhanced posts, weekly podcasts on a wide variety of topics, and access on demand to our full archive and to the comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, join us as a subscriber.

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