Unless stated otherwise, my source for hymn texts and tunes is The Lutheran Service Book.

Friday, April 20, 2018

"This Joyful Eastertide"

One of the hymns in church this week (the Third Sunday of Easter) was "This Joyful Eastertide," sung to the tune "Vruechten."  One of the lines in the refrain is "But now has Christ arisen, arisen, arisen," sung to this phrase:


Each successive "arisen" rises to a higher pitch, giving something of a musical impression of Christ's resurrection.

The last line of the verse is sung to this melody:


In the third verse, the text here is: until the trumpet "Shall wake the dead in number."  "Number" is sung to the last seven notes, so there's a musical sense of that multitude.