Alla Breve
A recently-revived TV game show is Name That Tune on which contestants try to guess the names of songs after hearing just a few notes of the melodies. On Easter Sunday, parishioners at the 8 AM Mass can play their own version of the game when the Shekinah Ringers play their piece called Risen This Day!. This bell piece is a compilation of three familiar hymn tunes used for modern Easter songs. The first is the hymn tune Llanfair which was written in 1817 by a Welshman named Robert Williams. Williams was a blind basket weaver with such great innate musical ability that he could write out a tune after hearing it just one time! The second tune is Gelobt Sei Gott, composed in 1609 by the German Melchior Vulpius. Vulpius was a Lutheran cantor, teacher and composer who penned nearly two hundred motets and over four hundred hymn tunes. The final tune is called Easter Hymn, and it first appeared in an English publication called the Lyra Davidica in 1708. This was a collection of hymns mostly translated from German hymns which were heavily influencing Anglicanism at the time. Of all the entries in the Lyra Davidica, Easter Hymn is the only one with a melody which has survived intact from the original publication. Can you name the songs we sing that normally go with these tunes?
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