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Friday, August 31, 2018

"O Christ, Our True and Only Light"

Earlier this year, one of the hymns I sang in church was "O Christ, Our True and Only Light."  I noticed a couple things about it.

It's sung to the tune "O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht," which is more or less the same title in German: "O Jesus Christ, true light."  Here's the first musical phrase:


In the fifth verse, the text here is "That they with us may evermore...."  (The "they" is "all those who walk apart" from the previous verse.)  "Evermore" is sung with a melisma (the last four notes).  Because the word is stretched out, there's something of a sense of its meaning.

There's a similar feature with the third musical phrase:


Still in the fifth verse, the text here is "And endless praise to You be giv'n."  This time, "praise" is sung with a melisma (the A and G in the second measure).  Because there's an extra syllable, there's something of a representation of the praise's being "endless."