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

Friday, August 27, 2021

"Jerusalem, My Happy Home"

When I transcribed the text for "Jerusalem, My Happy Home" a couple years ago, I noticed a handful of significant melismas.  The hymn is sung to the tune "Land of Rest."  Here's the third musical phrase:


In the third verse, the text here is "There grow such sweet and pleasant flow'rs."  "Sweet" is sung with a melisma (A Bb), giving a sense of degree (for the modifying "such").  In the fourth verse, the text here is "There evermore the angels dwell."  Both "evermore" (D C A Bb) and "dwell" (D C) are sung with melismas, giving a sense of duration.

In fact, every "(for)evermore" in the fourth verse (one in each line) has this feature.  I won't include notation for all of them, though.