"What a Friend We Have in Jesus"

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Played with the "mellow" drawbar organ sound on my Hammond SKX, with the Hammond XPK-130G pedals

"What a Friend We Have in Jesus"

Recently, I was thinking about "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and discovered a musical feature in one of the lines, but then I found that I'd already noticed this and added it to my list of things to write about.  Lest I rediscover this a third time, I'm writing about it now.

In the first verse, there are the lines "What a privilege to carry / Ev'rything to God in prayer!"  At the end of the verse there are similar lines (sung to the same musical phrase) reflecting on the "needless pain we bear - / All because we do not carry / Ev'rything to God in prayer!"  Here's the notation for those two lines, from the tune "Converse":

The syllables of those two "ev'rything"s are all sung to different pitches (C F A) and - altogether - span a sixth, and these two musical features highlight the variety and breadth of "ev'rything."

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For what it's worth, here's a post from last June about some more musical features in "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."

"What a Friend We Have in Jesus"

I sang "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" in church back in August and noticed a couple things about it, but I didn't have an opportunity to write about it until now.  In the meantime, however, I sang it in church again and noticed a few more things, so at least I can put them all in the same post now.

The hymn is sung to the tune "Converse."  Here are the first two phrases:

There's a cross inscription in the second phrase, but I think the only connection this has with the text is in the first verse, where the accompanying text (for both of these phrases) is "What a friend we have in Jesus, / All our sins and griefs to bear."  The cross inscription corresponds to "sins and griefs to," and Jesus bore our sins and griefs on the cross.

In the third verse, the text here is "Are we weak and heavy laden, / Cumbered with a load of care?"  For both of these phrases, the melody descends at the end, giving a sense of sinking under the "load of care" with which we are "heavy laden."

The sixth musical phrase has a similar feature:

In the first verse, the text here is "Oh, what needless pain we bear," and again the melody descends as if to represent sinking under the weight of the "pain we bear."  There's also an-other cross inscription here, but I don't think there are any connections between it and the hymn text.