Repertoire Project Piece 4: When Jesus Wept

Exploring early American music is something that's very important to me, and I think that this piece is a great way to do that. This particular arrangement would be best for an advanced mixed ensemble, but parts of the piece could be adapted to better suit younger choirs, such as making a round out of the main theme. There is some unison singing for the women, but not for the men. In fact, the amount of divisi that exists for the men probably calls for not only an advanced group, but a large group. The ranges are also not suitable for very young singers, and the bass part is probably to low for even high school students as it stands, though there are many places where popping up the octave would work just fine and would actually make approaching some dissonances easier. Working on achieving a forward, bright tone would be really fun, especially because it will help with tuning the many open chords that are a characteristic of this music.