Lift Up Your Heads

Use: General, Advent
Required Resources: SATB or SSA or TTBB choir
Language: English

An aerospace engineer and a church musician, Father Brian Muzas has put both these careers behind him to serve God as a priest in the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey. Ordained in 2003, Fr. Muzas previously served as music director at his seminary, where a version of Lift Up Your Heads was first sung.

This piece, with text by Georg Weissel (trans. by Catherine Winkworth) that alludes to Psalm 24, is a flexible arrangement of the triple-time chorale Macht hoch die Tür, perfectly capturing the joyful anticipation of the Advent season. Stanza 1 reads:

Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates, Behold the King of glory waits!
The King of kings is drawing near; The Savior of the world is here.
Life and salvation He doth bring; Wherefore rejoice and gladly sing:
We praise Thee, Father, now; Creator wise art Thou.

Originally written as a TTBB motet for the seminarians' voices, the composer has since arranged complementary versions for SATB voices and SSA voices. While the full choir version is in the key of F Major, the versions for women's or men's voices are in the sub-dominant key: B-flat Major. Each of the three versions contains all four stanzas, and is complete by itself; so an SATB, SSA or TTBB choir could make good use of this octavo. Another option for the SATB choir, though, would be to use the SSA and TTBB settings for the inner stanzas (2 and 3), singing the full SATB setting for stanzas 1 and 4.