Last month, I watched
the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 15th. The hymn was "Praise the Almighty," and although the whole hymn wasn't included in the recording, I found a small feature to note. When I lookt in my hymnal, I also discovered that I'd previously markt something else that I'd neglected to write about. The hymn is sung to the tune "Lobe den Herren, o meine Seele," and both of the features I noticed are in the first musical phrase:
In the third verse, the text here is "Blessed, oh, blessed are they forever" (the sense continues into the next line: "Whose help is from the Lord Most High"). "Forever" is sung with a melisma (C C B A), and since it's stretched out, there's a sense of that duration.
In the fifth verse, the text is "Praise, all you people, the name so holy." Here, "holy" is sung with a melisma (C B A), giving a sense of degree (for "so").
