Passiontide is a good time for church music. From the triumphal Palm Sunday processionals of ‘All Glory, Laud and Honour’ and ‘Ride On! Ride On in Majesty!’ to the mournful but grateful reflections of ‘My Song is Love Unknown’. From the desperate sadness of ‘O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded’, the tune coming from Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’, to the Handel-set pomp of ‘Thine Be The Glory’ on Easter Day.
This Holy Week a new song of praise has arrived. Or rather an ancient one has been revived. In 1918, archaeologists digging on a rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt discovered a tattered piece of papyrus on which was written the earliest surviving Christian Greek hymn that contains lyrics and musical notation.
