A Sister’s Question and the Rediscovery of a Lost Easter Sound
In the days leading up to this project, my sister wrote to me searching for a recording of Terra Tremuit, the Easter alleluia we grew up singing at St. Mary’s. She had found versions online, but none carried the sound or spirit she remembered. Her message stirred something in me — the same longing for a music we once knew so well, a music that seemed to have slipped beyond reach. In replying to her, I unearthed an old cassette from Easter Morning, 1991, and began the careful work of digitizing it. What started as a simple attempt to help my sister hear a beloved melody again became the doorway into this entire tribute: a return to the voices, memories, and grace of St. Mary’s Choir at Easter.
Easter at St. Mary’s in Akron was never simply a date on the calendar. It was the summit of the parish’s musical and spiritual life, the moment when the choir’s year‑long devotion blossomed into something luminous. Long before the first bells rang or the first alleluia was sung, the choir loft was already alive with quiet purpose. Rehearsals took on a different tone in those weeks—gentler, more focused, as though everyone sensed that what we were preparing was not merely music, but an offering.
Holy Week always marked a turning. Palm Sunday carried its own solemnity, but it was the Triduum that shaped the choir’s deepest work. On Holy Thursday, the music softened into contemplation; on Good Friday, it nearly disappeared into silence. And then came the long, breath‑held waiting before the Vigil, when the church sat in darkness and the choir waited with it, ready to give voice to the first light of the Resurrection.
Every other year, when the Easter Vigil in the Ordinary Form—the Novus Ordo—was celebrated in Latin, St. Mary’s felt like a doorway into the Church’s deep memory. The darkness, the fire, the Exsultet, the slow return of light—these were not performances. They were encounters. Even within the reformed liturgy, the choir’s Latin Ordinary gave the Vigil its solemn backbone, and when the Gloria finally burst forth—bells ringing, lights blazing, organ swelling—it felt as though the entire parish rose with Christ from the tomb.
Easter Morning Traditions and the Music of 1991
Easter morning had its own radiance. Where the Vigil was ancient and solemn, Easter morning was bright and full‑voiced. Parishioners arrived early, not out of obligation but out of desire, knowing that the choir would offer a half‑hour of sacred music before Mass. These preludes became a cherished tradition, a kind of musical procession leading the parish into the joy of the Resurrection.
One Easter in particular—1991—captures the spirit of those years with remarkable clarity. The program from that morning Mass, celebrated by Father Raymond Smith, reveals a choir unafraid to draw from every era of sacred music so long as it lifted hearts toward God. The prelude began with The Dawn Was Purpling O’er the Sky from the 1918 St. Basil’s Hymnal, a gentle rising of light. From there, the choir moved through The Holy City, Lani Smith’s Christ Is Risen with its echo of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, the cheerful Let the Bells of Easter Ring, and the sturdy hymn King All‑Glorious. It was a tapestry of devotion—old, new, solemn, joyful—woven together with the unmistakable sound of St. Mary’s.
The Mass itself reflected the parish’s unique musical identity. The Entrance Hymn, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, was sung to the tune Victimae Paschali, linking familiar English words with the ancient Easter sequence. The Ordinary was taken entirely from John Wiegand’s 1922 Mass in Honor of the Immaculate Conception, a setting that had become part of St. Mary’s musical DNA. The Sprinkling Rite featured Kempter’s Vidi Aquam, flowing and prayerful, and the Offertory—Wiegand’s Terra Tremuit—brought a solemn triumph to the liturgy. Communion carried its own tenderness: Let the Holy Anthem Rise, followed by Anthony Werner’s 1895 Regina Coeli, first sung and then played as an organ meditation. The closing hymns—Jesus Christ Is Risen Today and Christ Is Risen from the 1907 Sunday School Hymn Book—sent the parish forth in full Easter joy.
What made the St. Mary’s Choir remarkable was never perfection. It was devotion. We were teachers, retirees, students, parents, and parishioners who loved our church. We gave up evenings, weekends, and holidays because we believed the liturgy deserved our best. And somehow, through grace and perseverance, our best was enough. Easter revealed that truth more clearly than any other time of year. The music was never about performance. It was about faith—lived, sung, and shared.
Preserving the Recordings — A Fragile Ribbon of Sound
Some of these moments were preserved on a simple cassette tape, recorded live from the organ bench at the main console in the body of the church during that 1991 Easter morning. The recordings were rescued from that fragile ribbon of sound—nearly thirty years old—where time had left its mark: a soft hiss here, a faint rumble there, the unmistakable acoustics of a living church. After gentle restoration, the music remains exactly what it was: the honest, unpolished, heartfelt voice of a parish choir singing the Resurrection. These recordings are not studio‑quality, but they are authentic—the real sound of St. Mary’s, carried across decades.
Easter at St. Mary’s stands as one of the parish’s greatest gifts. It showed what a choir can be when it sings not for applause but for the glory of God. It showed what a parish can be when tradition and renewal walk hand in hand. And it showed what sacred music can accomplish when offered with humility and love. The St. Mary’s Choir carried that legacy for decades. And though the voices have changed and the years have passed, the memory of those Easter mornings—filled with light, filled with song, filled with faith—remains a treasure worth preserving.
As I listen to these recordings now, after nearly fifty years in the loft, I am deeply aware that I am the last of the St. Mary’s Choir. So many of the voices you hear—faithful friends, mentors, companions in song—have gone on to their final reward. Yet in these fragile, time‑worn tapes, they live again. Their harmonies rise, their devotion lingers, and the love they poured into the liturgy still shines through the imperfections of an old cassette. It does my heart good to hear them, my choir family, singing as they once did on Easter morning. I offer this short tribute to their memory, with gratitude for the years we shared and the music that continues to echo in my soul.
