What Wondrous Love: Folk Passion

Meridian Chorale

Palm Sunday
April 1, 2012
4:00 PM
Druid Hills Baptist Church
Atlanta, GA - Corner of Ponce and Highland

The Passion of Christ has been central to the life experience of common southern people. Their love and empathy is well recorded in the heartfelt strains of their songs. Singing from their experience, this unique Passion service is built around folk hymns from the famous 19^th century The Sacred Harp tunebook, compiled in Georgia in 1844.

Southern Folk Passion was presented for its first four years with the prophetic preaching of Fred Craddock. Recordings of this service with his preaching are available by clicking Folk Passion Recording.

With Rev. Craddock's retirement from this service in 1999, the Folk Passion Service changed character from a preaching service to a musical service based on readings from the Passion of St. Mark, given by renowned Georgia actress, Brenda Bynum. Woven through the narrative will be folk hymns from The Sacred Harp tunebook commenting on Christ's Passion, sung by the congregation as well as the Meridian Chorale. Thus, using folk materials, this service is modeled on historic musical Passion settings similar to those of J.S. Bach.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul,

What wondrous love is this, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,

To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.