"Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation"

I wrote about some small features in "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation" before, but when I was looking at the hymn again last month, I found an-other instance of a feature I've been noticing a lot lately.

The third verse begins with the lines "Grant, we pray, to all Your faithful / All the gifts they ask to gain."  The first of these lines is sung to this musical phrase from the tune "Westminster Abbey":

The phrase "all Your faithful" is sung to notes of all different pitches (spanning nearly an octave:  C A F# D), giving a sense of the entirety of "all."

"Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation"

Over the last couple years, I found a number of things to note in "Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation," sung to the tune "Westminster Abbey."

Here's the second phrase:

In the third verse, the text here is "All the gifts they ask to gain."  "Gifts" is sung with a melisma (B A), giving a sense of the entirety of that "all."

Here's the fourth phrase:

In the first verse, the text here is "Binding all the Church in one."  Similar to what's described above, both "all" (A B) and "Church" (G F#) are sung with melismas for a sense of the entirety of "all."  In the fourth verse, the text here, describing the Trinity, is "Ever three and ever one."  The second "ever" is sung with a melisma (G F# F#), giving something of a sense of duration.

In the arrangement in The Lutheran Service Book, the melody and harmony parts converge at the end of this line so that the E is sung by both.  Musically, this illustrates the word's meaning, although the effect is more applicable to the voices converging at the end of the line "Binding all the Church in one."