Palm Sunday

What hymns and songs would you normally look forward to singing on Palm Sunday?  The traditional favourites include All glory, laud and honour and Ride on, ride on in majesty!.  The more contemporary repertoire includes Make way, make way and You are the King of glory.  Then there are songs set to well-known tunes, such as We have a king who rides a donkey ('What shall we do with the drunken sailor?'), and There's a man riding in on a donkey ('Sing hosanna').

My personal favourite is Ride on, ride on in majesty, sung to the tune Winchester New (as on the video link above).  The combination of words and tune conveys to me the complex mix of what's happening on Palm Sunday - the excitement of the crowds, the reality expressed in Zechariah's prophecy (quoted by Matthew in his account, Matthew 21:5):

                               Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
                                    Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
                               Behold, your king is coming to you;
                                     righteous and having salvation is he,
                               humble and mounted on a donkey,
                                     on a colt, the foal of a donkey.          
                                                                            (Zechariah 9:9, ESV)

all juxtaposed with the great solemnity of the fact that Jesus is riding to his death; that only by his death will he triumph o'er captive death and conquered sin; only by making this sacrifice will he be in a position to take his power and reign.

According to Wikipedia, there's an indirect local association between this hymn and the town of Wrexham, where I live, through the local figure of Bishop Reginald Heber.*  Henry Hart Milman wrote the hymn in 1820, but it wasn't published until 1827.  It was included in Bishop Heber's Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year, along with 12 other hymns written by Milman.  Apparently, their inclusion was a consequence of the two men meeting in 1823.  By 1907, it was described as the most popular Palm Sunday hymn in the English language (John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology).

* Reginald Heber was born in Malpas, Cheshire (12 miles from Wrexham), and served as Canon Cursal of St Aspah Cathedral from 1817 - 1823.