I follow Roger McGuinn's Folk Den, a series of monthly recordings of folk songs. For December, McGuinn recorded "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and while I'm not sure it's technically a folk song, I noticed a small thing to write about.
McGuinn's version is slightly different from what I'm used to (he uses the second half of the first verse as a refrain), but - as in The Lutheran Service Book - the second verse begins with the lines
For Christ is born of Mary,That second line is sung to this musical phrase (according to LSB, the tune is "St. Louis"):
And, gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wond'ring love.
There's a rather large interval between the two syllables of "above." It spans a sixth, from C to A. This alone gives a musical sense of "above," but so does the fact that that A note is the highest note in this phrase.
A very minor point: in the fourth verse, the line "Descend to us, we pray" is sung to this same musical phrase, so there's a very slight descent in the notes to which "descend" is sung (just a whole step: G to F).
While looking over the hymn in order to write this post, I found a second small thing to write about. The second half of the second verse is
O morning stars, togetherThe last line is sung to this phrase:
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the king
And peace to all the earth!
The stars' "sing[ing]... peace to all the earth" is sung to a descending phrase, so there's a musical sense of the stars' "sing[ing]" down to earth.
