"Your Hand, O Lord, in Days of Old"

Over the last two years, I found a couple small features to note in "Your Hand, O Lord, in Days of Old," sung to the tune "Kingsfold."

Near the end of the second verse, there's a line that describes God as "Almighty as before," sung to this musical phrase:

The "al-" of "almighty" is sung with a merism (G A), giving a sense of this entirety.

The last two lines of the third verse (and of the whole hymn) are "That whole and sick and weak and strong / May praise You evermore."  That last line is sung to this phrase:

"Evermore" is sung with a melisma (A G E E), and since it's drawn out, there's a sense of that duration.

"Dives and Lazarus"

Last year, one of the songs that Roger McGuinn did for his Folk Den project was "Dives and Lazarus," based on Luke 16:19-31 (and sung to the tune "Kingsfold").  In the Bible, the rich man isn't named, but yester-day, I discovered why he's called Dives in the song.

As part of my self-assigned Latin homework, I lookt up the word divitias (riches) for a sentence I was translating.  Among the adjacent glossary entries was dives, an adjective that means rich or wealthy.  In the song, this adjective is used as a substantive:  the "rich [man] and Lazarus."

"No Tramp of Soldiers' Marching Feet"

One of the hymns sung in church on Palm Sunday was "No Tramp of Soldiers' Marching Feet," and while I was singing it, I noticed something about one of the phrases.  The text is sung to the tune "Kingsfold," and the end of the second phrase of that melody descends:

In the third verse, the text sung to this melody is "The palms, how soon laid down!"  The descending melody there is a musical representation of that laying down.  Furthermore, "soon" is sung to that second pair of eighth notes, and that melismatic pronunciation (two syllables instead of just one), with the second note lower than the first, expedites the descent.