Music of the Month: Grace Unbounded: Short and Easy Lord’s Supper Preludes

Treating sixteen tunes commonly associated with the Lord’s Supper, Grace Unbounded is a book you will always want handy for Communion distribution. When you’re not sure how much music will be needed, these brief pieces of two or three pages in length are an ideal choice. A wide variety of techniques keep the settings interesting and fun while being easy to play.

Using Grace Unbounded

Edwin T. Childs’s Grace Unbounded, a collection of Lord’s Supper hymn tune preludes, continues his series of accessible hymn preludes with minimal pedal. In addition to his seasonal volumes of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter hymn preludes, these Lord’s Supper preludes provide the church organist with a bevy of options on a Sunday morning. In fact, the sixteen preludes in this volume cover seventeen of the twenty-seven Lord’s Supper hymns in Lutheran Service Book!

As church organists know, the distribution of the Lord’s Supper provides most congregations with the opportunity to sing multiple hymns in succession, and the organist must be prepared! While local circumstances will guide the exact decisions made about organ repertoire surrounding the singing of distribution hymns, this volume can be used in a few ways.

First, many of these preludes can serve as hymn introductions to the congregation’s singing. Most are written in the same meter in which the hymn is sung, and each one states the melody clearly for the listener to identify and prepare to sing. The variety of styles and registration suggestions also provide for an effective and inviting hymn introduction.

Second, church organists know they must be ready to adapt and adjust their plans during the distribution of the Lord’s Supper due to timing or other conditions. In those cases, these preludes can be employed as interludes between hymns to give the congregation a chance to reset before turning to the next hymn to be sung. One example is “The Ash Grove” which is less than a minute long, letting you lengthen distribution music slightly without needing to incorporate a new hymn. Or, if the scheduled hymns for distribution have been exhausted and the organist needs something to play during the remaining time, one or more of these preludes are perfect to fill the empty space.

Hymn Tunes to Consider

Most of the sixteen hymn tunes in Grace Unbounded come from the German Lutheran chorale tradition and have been staples in Lutheran churches since before Lutheran Service Book. That familiar heritage is enriched with these new prelude settings. A few of the tunes in this volume are likely less familiar or at least relatively newer to many Lutheran congregations.

For instance, you’ll find a prelude on the tune PREPARATION for the hymn “What Is This Bread” (LSB 629). The text and tune were written by Frederic and Jean Baue, respectively. They composed the hymn in 1990. The five stanzas all begin with a question, and these questions are based on Martin Luther’s questions and answers on the Sacrament of the Altar in the Small Catechism. For example, the first two stanzas begin with the questions “What is this bread?” and “What is this wine?” that echo the first catechetical question, “What is the Sacrament of the Altar?”.

After each question, the stanza goes on to provide an answer, just as Luther does in the Small Catechism. As you would imagine, the tune, written specifically for the text, complements it well. The four notes that accompany the four syllables of each stanza’s opening question are a simple rising motif (C-D-F-F), which, as is observed in the Companion to the Hymns, “mimics the rising inflection of asking a question in the English language” (LSB Companion 759). 

Another Lord’s Supper hymn that is relatively new to Lutheran congregations is “Wide Open Stand the Gates” (LSB 639), set to the tune JERUSALEM, DU HOCHGEBAUTE STADT, a German chorale tune that precedes the late-19th century Lord’s Supper text written by Wilhelm Löhe.

Childs’s prelude on this tune is written in 9/8 meter, and the hymn tune is sounded in longer, slower tones. This varies from the 4/4 meter in which the hymn is sung. The lilting style of the prelude sheds a more introspective character on what is otherwise known as a martial and even thunderous hymn tune.

Hymn texts with the abbreviation LSB are from Lutheran Service Book © 2006 and LSB Companion are from Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns © 2019 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The quotations from the Small Catechism are taken from Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation © 1986, 2017 Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved. 

Take home a copy of Grace Unbounded to use during your church’s Lord’s Supper distribution by clicking the button below.