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

Friday, May 10, 2019

"Long before the World Is Waking"

One of the hymns in church on Sunday was "Long before the World Is Waking" (the text is drawn from John 21:1-17, which was one of the readings).  I noticed a few small features.

The first is purely about the text.  The third and fourth lines of the fourth verse are: "Fear and failure, doubt, denying, / Full and free forgiveness find."  The alliteration of "Full and free forgiveness find" helps to give a sense of the all-encompassing nature of that forgiveness.

The other things I noticed deal with the fifth and sixth musical phrases (the tune is "All Saints"):


In the fourth verse, the text here is "All the soul's dark night is past, / Morning breaks in joy at last" (which I believe is taken from Psalm 30:5).  "Breaks" is sung with a melisma (G A), so while it's used in a more metaphorical sense, there's a musical "break[ing]" of the word into more than one pitch.

In the fifth verse, the text is "All our days, on ev'ry shore, / Christ is ours forevermore!"  "Ev'ry" is sung with a melisma here (D C Bb), and that extra syllable gives a sense of number.