"My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less"

One of the hymns in a church service I attended last month was "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less" (paired with the tune "Magdalen").  I noticed a small feature in the last line of the third verse:  "He then is all my hope and stay," sung to this musical phrase:

"All" is sung to a dotted quarter note.  This is the longest note in the phrase, and to some degree, this greater duration lends a sense of the entirety of that "all."

"Magdalen" (TLH #370)

I had to put my guitar and bass in drop D tuning to accommodate notes out of the standard tuning range.  Had I seen these sooner, I would have just transposed the tune.

"My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less"

A number of years ago, I noticed a small feature in "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less."  The hymn is paired with two melodies in The Lutheran Service Book, "Magdalen" (#575) and "The Solid Rock" (#576), but what I noticed is specific to "Magdalen."

The refrain is "On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; / All other ground is sinking sand," sung to these musical phrases:

The line "All other ground is sinking sand" is sung to a descending melody (spanning an octave: C to C), musically giving a sense of that "sinking."