O Sacred Head, Now Wounded

🎸 Strum Pattern — Verse

The PASSION CHORALE is one of the most harmonically rich tunes in the entire hymn tradition. Bach's harmonization uses the Bm chord as a particularly important color — it appears on "thorns Thine only crown," "Mine mine was the transgression," and "he who dies believing" — always at the lyric's point of deepest personal weight. I play a slow, deliberate down strum on each chord at 70 BPM, giving every chord its full value. The D - G - D and D - A - D movements carry most of the harmonic content and they feel stable and grounded. The Bm is the emotional disruption — the minor chord that carries the personal cost. Let it ring without rushing to the next chord.

🔊 Dynamics — Verse 2

"Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain." I have sung this line more times than I can count and it still stops me. The text is doing something specific here: it is assigning guilt correctly. Not "our" transgression in a comfortable corporate plural, but "mine." The original Latin text attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux and Paul Gerhardt's German adaptation both use this first-person directness, and James Alexander's English preserves it. I play verse 2 with the full weight of what it means. No soft dynamics on "Mine, mine was the transgression." That line deserves the same volume as a confession — audible, personal, clear.

🎵 Band Direction

This is one of the few hymns we play exclusively with piano — no guitar, no drums, no bass. The PASSION CHORALE belongs to a sacred setting that instruments with a natural sustain (piano, organ) serve far better than a plucked or struck guitar. If piano is not available, classical guitar fingerpicked very quietly is acceptable. Electric guitar is completely wrong for this hymn. Drums would be inappropriate. For Good Friday services we sometimes have a single candle burning and the piano played at near-pianissimo. The hymn has survived eight hundred years of church history in various forms precisely because its musical setting asks nothing more of the listener than attention and a willing heart.

🎤 Vocal

Key of D at 70 BPM sits in a slightly lower range that gives the hymn its contemplative, meditative quality. The PASSION CHORALE melody is not immediately singable on a first hearing — it requires some familiarity. I recommend playing through verse 1 as an introduction before inviting the congregation to sing. By verse 2 most voices have found it. The Bm chord moments ask the vocal melody to descend — on "Bm" the melody often lands on a lower note, which gives those moments their weight. Capo 2 gives E; capo 5 gives G for those who find D difficult on guitar. This hymn is liturgically associated with Good Friday and Holy Week but we have used it at any service where the cross is the focus.

→ Transitions

This is our primary Good Friday hymn and our most frequent choice for any service focused on the suffering and death of Christ. Verse 3 — "what language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end" — is itself a meditation on the inadequacy of language before the cross, which is one of the most honest things a worshipper can acknowledge. Verse 4 — "he who dies believing dies safely in Thy love" — is a quiet, personal statement of resurrection hope that closes the hymn in peace rather than triumph. That is appropriate: Good Friday ends with burial, not resurrection. The triumph is Easter. This hymn honors the darkness of the Friday without rushing past it.