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

Friday, March 3, 2023

"When I Survey the Wondrous Cross"

Recently, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from 10 February.  The hymn was "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" (LSB #425, sung to the tune "Hamburg"), and I noticed a few features in it.

The second line of the third verse is "Sorrow and love flow mingled down!" sung to this musical phrase:


"Flow" is sung with a melisma (A G), giving something of a sense of movement, and since this pair of notes descends, there's even a bit of the sense of the "down" from the end of the line.

In the fourth verse, the text here is "That ["the whole realm of nature"] were a tribute far too small."  Here, "too" is sung with a melisma (E F), provided a sense of degree.

The fourth verse ends with the lines "Love so amazing, so divine, / Demands my soul, my life, my all!"  The first of these two lines is sung to this phrase:


"Amazing" and "divine" are both sung with melismas (G A G A and A G A, respectively), and these articulations provide a sense of degree for those "so"s.