At the Cross Her Station Keeping

Use: Lent
Required Resources: organ


These subtle and masterful alternate accompaniments for the traditional Way of the Cross hymn, "At the Cross Her Station Keeping," assist the faithful in their meditation on the various stations. Nowhere is the melody obscured; in fact, it's always found in the upper voice. The composer has carefully crafted each accompaniment to fit the scenario of the station.

He states, "While they are certainly not 'program music,' they do derive some of their form from the action of the station – for example, the pedalpoint in the third, seventh and ninth representing Jesus falling, or the octave motion of the pedal in the eleventh station representing the rising and falling of the hammer that drove the nails into the hands and feet. In all cases, the goal was to make the correlation between the action and the music without being so obvious that it becomes a distraction to those being accompanied."

This set of fourteen short harmonizations will bring a touch of Bach's famous "musical symbolism" to your next service of the Way of the Cross.