"St. Magnus" (TLH #219)

Because this is a shorter tune, I went through it three times.  The tenor part of the Amen cadence fell beneath the range of standard guitar tuning, so I played those notes an octave higher.

"O God, My Faithful God"

I noticed a couple small features specific to Lutheran Worship's version of "O God, My Faithful God."  In Lutheran Worship, the hymn is sung to the tune "Was frag' ich nach der Welt," but in The Lutheran Service Book, it's sung to the tune "O Gott, du frommer Gott."

Here are the first two phrases of "Was frag' ich nach der Welt":

The first two lines are "O God, my faithful God, / True fountain ever flowing."  "Flowing" is sung with a melisma (F# E D), musically giving a sense either of movement or of the duration of "ever."

The second two phrases:

In the third verse, the text here is "Guard me lest idle speech / May from my lips be falling."  "Falling" is sung to a descending group of notes (C# B A), musically giving a sense of its meaning.  That it's sung with a melisma emphasizes this.

LSB #596 "All Christians Who Have Been Baptized"

Biblical citations in the hymnal:  Romans 6:1-10, Ephesians 5:25b-26, Ezekiel 36:25-27, Galatians 3:26-27

Romans 6:1-10:  "1 What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  2 By no means!  How can we who died to sin still live in it?  3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

"5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.  7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.  8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God."

Ephesians 5:25b-26:  "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word"

Ezekiel 36:25-27:  "25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Galatians 3:26-27:  "26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.  27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ."

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The lines "Consider now what God has done / The gifts He gives to ev'ryone / Baptized into Christ Jesus!" in the hymn's first verse seem to refer to the text from Romans 6.

The third verse incorporates the texts from Ephesians 5 and Ezekiel 36.

Galatians 3:26-27 appears at the beginning of the fourth verse:  "In Baptism we now put on Christ."

The beginning of the sixth verse ("So use it well!  You are made new - / In Christ a new creation!") comes from 2 Corinthians 5:17:  "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

"St. Anne"

The arrangements of "St. Anne" in The Lutheran Service Book (#733) and Lutheran Worship (#180) are the same, and they differ from the arrangement in The Lutheran Hymnal (#123) by only one note.  An F in the tenor part in the TLH arrangement becomes an A in the LW/LSB arrangement.

This is once through the TLH arrangement, once through the LW/LSB arrangement, and then the Amen cadence from TLH.

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45: I. Selig sind, die da Leid tragen

Last week, I listened to Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, Op. 45.  I've listened to it only a handful of times (eight, according to my records), so I'm not that familiar with it, but I did notice a small feature in the first movement (Selig sind, die da Leid tragen).

Here are the first few bars of the string parts:

[source]

The third bar of the cello part and the fifth and seventh bars of the viola (Bratschen) part match the first bar of a tune that Haydn wrote.  Here's the first phrase:

In The Lutheran Service Book, this tune has the title "Austria."

According to Britannica, Haydn's tune was paired with the text of the "Deutschlandlied" in the 1840s, although it didn't become the official national anthem of Germany until 1922.  Brahms' requiem is from the 1860s, a few decades later.  It seems, then, that he took the opening notes of the "Deutschlandlied" and put them here at the beginning of his requiem, as if to indicate its "German-ness."

"Rex Gloriae" (TLH #218)

I transposed this from Ab major to G major.  The Amen cadence fell beneath the range of guitar in standard tuning, though, so I played those notes an octave higher.

"Alleluia! Sing to Jesus"

Over the last few years, I found some things to note in "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus," sung to the tune "Hyfrydol."  Here's the first musical phrase:

In the fourth verse, the text here is "Alleluia!  King eternal."  "Eternal" is sung with a melisma (A G F G), musically giving a sense of duration.

The first verse ends with the lines "'Jesus out of ev'ry nation / Has redeemed us by His blood.'"  The first of these two lines is sung to this musical phrase:

The phrase "ev'ry nation" is sung with melismas (A F A | G A Bb A G), and this illustrates that breadth.

LSB #595 "O Blessed Spring"

Biblical citations in the hymnal:  John 15:1-5, Genesis 2:9, Revelation 22:14

John 15:1-5:  "1 'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.  4 Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  5 I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.'"

Genesis 2:9:  "And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.  The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Revelation 22:14:  "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates."

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The hymn uses the imagery from John 15, and Jesus as the vine is mentioned specifically in the first and fifth verses.

The other two cited verses (but mostly Revelation 22:14) appear in the last two lines of the fifth verse:  "That Word and water thus revive / And join us to Your Tree of Life."

The line "We breathe our last, return to dust" in the fourth verse refers to either Genesis 3:19 ("'By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.'") or Ecclesiastes 3:20 ("All go to one place.  All are from the dust, and to dust all return.").

"St. Agnes"

This is the first recording in a new series I'm doing (and for which "Farley Castle" was my trial run).  Using recorders, I'm going to record the tunes named after saints, combining arrangements from The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran Worship, and The Lutheran Service Book.  I have no set schedule for these, although I'm going to post them on Tuesdays.

"St. Agnes" appears in only The Lutheran Hymnal (#361) and The Lutheran Service Book (#554), but the arrangement is the same.

"Aus meines Herzens Grunde" (TLH #217)

"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"

Recently, I was thinking about "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" and remembered some features I'd noticed last year in a version by the Isley Brothers.  I dug out my copy of All God's People Sing! and found that it includes "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" (#117), although the melody there is different from what I'm familiar with.  The melody (titled "In His Hands") changes a bit from verse to verse, but the first verse (as I know it) is something like:

The text for the first verse is

He's got the whole world in His hands,

He's got the whole wide world in His hands,

He's got the whole world in His hands,

He's got the whole world in His hands.

The first three "whole"s are sung to half notes, and the difference between the lengths of these half notes and the much shorter values of the surrounding notes provides a sense of that entirety.  The first three "world"s are each sung with a melisma (A F, G E, A F, respectively), and this gives a sense of the breadth of "whole" and "wide."

Each verse simply substitutes something else for "the whole world."  The second verse alternates between "the wind and the rain" and "the sun and the moon"; the third verse repeats "the tiny little baby"; and the fourth verse alternates between "you and me, brother" and "you and me, sister."  To some degree, then, the text is a rhetorical catalogue, listing various entities that are "in His hands" and indicating the all-encompassing nature of God's care.

LSB #594 "God's Own Child, I Gladly Say It"

Biblical citations in the hymnal:  Romans 6:1-10, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Titus 3:4-7

Romans 6:1-10:  "1 What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  2 By no means!  How can we who died to sin still live in it?  3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

"5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.  7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.  8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God."

1 Peter 3:18-22:  "18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."

Titus 3:4-7:  "4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

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These three texts are similar enough that it's difficult to say where or if the hymn draws from one more than the others.  The first and last lines, however, ("God's own child, I gladly say it" and "I'm a child of paradise!") seem to refer to "becom[ing] heirs" in Titus 3:7.

The beginning of the fifth verse ("There is nothing worth comparing / To this life-long comfort sure!") seems to borrow from Romans 8:18:  "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

"Lobt Gott, ihr Christen" (TLH #106)

"Dearest Jesus, We Are Here"

When I wrote a post about the Biblical sources of "Dearest Jesus, We Are Here," I noticed a small feature in the music.  The hymn is sung to the tune "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier."  Here's the second-to-last phrase:

In the third verse, the text here is "In Your arms be shielded ever."  As if the demonstrate the duration of that "ever," "shielded" is sung with a melisma (G A G).

LSB #593 "See This Wonder in the Making"

Biblical citations in the hymnal:  Matthew 3:16-17, Titus 3:3-7, Ephesians 5:25b-26, Mark 10:16

Matthew 3:16-17:  "16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'"

Titus 3:3-7:  "3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaved to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.  4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."

Ephesians 5:25b-26:  "as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word"

Mark 10:16:  "And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them."

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The text from Matthew 3 seems to appear in the second verse, specifically in the line "And the Father beams, 'Beloved.'"  The text from Mark 10 is at the end of the third verse:  "God, into Your arms we place him/her/them, / With Your love and peace embrace him/her/them."

The text from Ephesians comes at the very end of the hymn, the last line of the fourth verse:  "Born again by Word and water."

The text from Titus informs the hymn (especially the first two verses) more broadly, although the line "'Heir of gifts a king would covet!'" at the end of the hymn's second verse seems to refer to verse 7.

"Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" (TLH #95)

Because this is a shorter tune, I went through it three times.

"Father Most Holy"

While working on the post about the Biblical sources of "Father Most Holy" last year, I noticed some small features in the hymn.  It's sung to the tune "Christe sanctorum"; here's the last musical phrase:

The end of the second verse calls the Trinity "Hope of all living."  "Living" is sung with a melisma (F# E D), musically giving a sense of the entirety of that "all."

The fourth verse ends with the lines "Glory we offer, praise Thee and adore Thee, / Now and forever."  Here, "forever" is sung with a melisma (G F# E D), musically giving a sense of duration.

The whole note in this phrase is the longest note value in the entire tune, and it also provides a sense of the breadth of "all living" and the duration of "forever."