"Hosanna, Loud Hosanna"

I have a few things from quite a few years ago to note about "Hosanna, Loud Hosanna," sung to the tune "Ellacombe."  Here are the third and fourth musical phrases, repeated later as the seventh and eight phrases:

In the second verse, the text in the third and fourth lines is "The victor palm branch waving / And chanting clear and loud."  "Waving" is sung with a melisma (C# D E), giving something of an impression of its meaning.

In the fourth verse, the text in the seventh and eighth lines is "And in His blissful presence / Eternally rejoice!"  Here, "eternally" is sung with a melisma (E F# G# A A), giving a sense of duration.

There's a similar feature in the preceding two lines of the fourth verse:  "Oh, may we ever praise Him / With heart and life and voice," sung to these phrases:

"Praise" is sung with a melisma (B G# A), giving a sense of "ever."

"Ellacombe" (TLH #161)

I often transpose tunes down, but I transposed this one up from Bb major to C major.

"O Day of Rest and Gladness"

I think I've actually run out of things to write about in Lenten hymns (excepting those specifically for Holy Week), so here are some things I noticed about "O Day of Rest and Gladness" back in June.

Because I found so many little things, I'm going to go through the hymn in sections of two phrases each.  The tune is "Ellacombe."

The first two phrases:

In the fourth verse, the text here is "That light our hope sustaining / We walk the pilgrim way."  "Walk" is sung with a melisma (E F#), musically giving a sense of movement.  As a whole, the second phrase here is completely conjunct (it doesn't skip any notes in the scale), which gives a sense of walking step by step.

The second two phrases:

In the second verse, the text is "This day for our salvation / Christ rose from depths of earth."  The "rose" is sung with an ascending melisma (E F#), musically giving a sense of the word's meaning.

In the fourth verse, the text is "At length our rest attaining, / Our endless Sabbath day."  Here, "endless" is sung with a melisma (E F# G), for a musical sense of duration.

The third two phrases:

In the first verse, the text is "This day the high and lowly / Through ages joined to bless."  One of the notes to which "lowly" is sung (F#) is the lowest in the phrase, musically giving a sense of the word's meaning.  Incidentally, "high and lowly" is an instance of a merism.

The fourth two phrases:

In the first verse, the text is "Sing, 'Holy, holy, holy,' / The triune God confess," and in the second verse, the text is "And thus this day more glorious / A threefold light was giv'n."  "Triune" and "threefold" are both sung to three notes (E F# G), so there's a musical picture of that number.

In the fourth verse, the text is "The Church her voice upraises / To Thee, blest Three in One."  "Upraises" is sung to a (generally) ascending group of notes (G B C D), musically giving a sense of that "uprais[ing]."

"Ellacombe" (TLH #9)

I recorded an amalgamation of the LW and LSB arrangements of "Ellacombe" a few months ago, and - while I didn't verify - I think the TLH arrangement is the same as at least one of those, so this wasn't too difficult.

"Ellacombe"

I usually record these the same day I post them, but since I'm going out of town to-day, I recorded this one in advance.  And because of that, I thought I'd try something I wanted to do for awhile: I recorded the bass part too.  I can pretty easily divide the melody from the harmony part in the treble clef as I'm playing, but apparently this ability doesn't extend to bass clef.  It's almost entirely double stops, so I copied it out and divided it into two parts.  I recorded both, but all four tracks together sounded too messy, so I ended up using only one (the one with the lower notes).

As usual, this is one arrangement from Lutheran Worship (#106) and one arrangement from the Lutheran Service Book (#443).