Were You There?

"Were You There?" is a wonderful African-American spiritual especially in the context of Good Friday and Holy Week. The lyrics ask the listener if they were there at Jesus' crucifixion and bring to mind contemplation of what the event would have been like. This arrangement by Mark Lewis is for 3-5 octave handbell choir and adds handchimes for C5 to C7 as well. The singing bell technique is also utilized. This piece is potentially quite rhythmically challenging as there are many examples of triplet and duplet rhythms happening simultaneously. However, the actual techniques, bell changes, and overall difficulty of the parts is not too extreme, leading to a difficulty rating of 4-.