A Narrative of the Last Day
'In That Great Gettin' Up Morning' is one of the most ambitious spirituals in terms of narrative scope - it attempts nothing less than a verse-by-verse account of the events of the Last Day, from the first trumpet blast through the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the entry of the righteous into eternal life. This narrative ambition reflects the tradition of the Dies irae (Day of Wrath) in Catholic liturgy and the eschatological imagery of Matthew 24-25 and Revelation 19-20, but translated into the vernacular theology and musical idiom of the enslaved community.
The title refers to the morning of the resurrection - 'that great gettin' up morning' - a phrase that combines the ordinary language of rising from sleep with the extraordinary event of rising from the dead. The casual domesticity of 'gettin' up' placed against the cosmic significance of what is being described creates the characteristic tonal mix of the spiritual: taking the grandest theological events and speaking of them in the most ordinary human terms. This is not naivety but a specific theological strategy: the enslaved community refused to let eschatology remain abstract and distant, insisting that the last things be as immediate and personal as the daily experience of oppression.
1 Thessalonians 4 and the Trumpet Call
The primary Pauline text is 1 Thessalonians 4:16 - 'For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.' The spiritual's trumpet imagery draws directly on this passage: 'I'm gonna tell you about the coming of the judgment / fare thee well, fare thee well / There's a better day a-coming / fare thee well, fare thee well.' The trumpet that Paul describes is the signal event that launches the spiritual's narrative.
Matthew 24:31 adds the gathering of the elect: 'And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.' The spiritual's narrative of the scattered righteous being gathered corresponds to the enslaved community's experience of families scattered by sale: the Last Day is the day of reunion, when the severed will be restored.
The Judgment and Revelation 20
Revelation 20:12 - 'And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened... The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books' - provides the framework for the spiritual's narrative of judgment. The 'books' that are opened on the Last Day are of particular significance to a community for whom the keeping of records - who owned whom, the legal documents of sale and property - had been instruments of oppression. The divine record-keeping of the Last Day would tell a different story.
The judgment scene in the spiritual is both awesome and hopeful: the singers describe it in detail but with the confidence of those who expect acquittal. This confidence is not based on their own righteousness but on the righteousness of Christ, who appears throughout the spiritual as the one who vouches for his people. The eschatological confidence of the enslaved community was not naive - they knew they lived in a world where earthly courts judged them unjustly - but theological: the divine judge was just, and they trusted the justice of God.
'Fare Thee Well'
The refrain 'fare thee well, fare thee well' - repeated between each narrative verse - is among the most tonally ambiguous phrases in the spiritual tradition. 'Fare thee well' is a farewell, a leave-taking. The refrain could be read as the righteous saying farewell to the world of suffering; as the singer saying farewell to those who are not going forward; or as the community saying farewell to each other in confident expectation of reunion. The repetition of the refrain creates a rhythmic structure that gives the narrative both momentum and emotional punctuation.
The joyful energy of the spiritual - its refusal to be solemn about even the Last Judgment - contrasts with the terrifying Dies irae tradition of Latin liturgy. Where the medieval tradition trembled before the consuming fire of divine judgment, the spiritual rejoiced in the anticipated liberation it would bring. This is not a different God but a different social position: the victims of earthly injustice experience divine judgment as liberation, not as threat.
Concert Performances
Marian Anderson and William Warfield performed the spiritual in formal concert settings, establishing its place in the art-song tradition. Moses Hogan's powerful choral arrangement for the New World Chorale became a standard of the concert spiritual repertoire. The spiritual's narrative structure, with its multiple verses and driving refrain, makes it effective as a concert piece in a way that more meditative spirituals are not: it has the forward momentum of a story being told and the irresistible energy of a community that is sure of where the story ends.