Vruechten - Sacred or Secular?

An Early Music Monday post for Easter Monday - have you ever noticed how many of the songs used in religious liturgies have Renaissance or Baroque origins? Or aren’t actually sacred at all? This is one of those, and my personal favorite of all the hymns for Easter.

1 This joyful Eastertide, away with sin and sorrow! My Love, the Crucified, has sprung to life this morrow: Refrain: Had Christ, who once was slain, not burst His three-day prison, our faith had been in vain; but now has Christ arisen, arisen, arisen; but now has Christ arisen! 2 Death’s flood has lost its chill since Jesus crossed the river; Lover of souls, from ill my passing soul deliver: [Refrain] 3 My flesh in hope shall rest and for a season slumber till trump from east to west shall wake the dead in number: [Refrain]

From Mark Dwyer, Organist and Choirmaster:

VRUECHTEN is originally a seventeenth-century Dutch folk tune for the love song "De liefde Voortgebracht." It became a hymn tune in Joachim Oudaen's David's Psalmen (1685) as a setting for "Hoe groot de vruechten zijn." The tune is distinguished by the rising sequences in the refrain, which provide a fitting word painting for "arisen." Sung with athletic enthusiasm by the congregation of The Church of the Advent, the organist provides an improvisation as the altar is censed at the Offertory of the First Mass of Easter.