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

Friday, March 17, 2023

"My Faith Looks Up to Thee"

A couple months ago, when I was practicing the arrangement of "My Faith Looks Up to Thee" in James Bastien's Great Hymns Arranged for Organ, I noticed a feature that's a bit obscured in The Lutheran Service Book (because there's a line break in the music in the middle of this phrase).

Near the end of the first verse, there's the line "Take all my guilt away," sung to this musical phrase from the tune "Olivet":


(I followed the LSB setting, which is in D major; in Bastien's book, the tune is in C major.)

The three words in the phrase "all my guilt" are each sung to a different pitch (F# G A), and this provides a sense of the entirety of that "all."