"Once He Came in Blessing"

Last week, I watched the Concordia University Wisconsin chapel service from the 2nd.  The hymn was "Once He Came in Blessing," apparently from a hand-out rather than from a hymnal, since the versions in TLH, LW, and LSB all have four verses each, but six verses were sung in the service.  In any case, I noticed a couple small features.

The hymn is sung to the tune "Gottes Sohn ist kommen."  Here are the first two musical phrases:

In the first verse, the text here is "Once He came in blessing, / All our sins redressing" (TLH has "all our ills").  The phrase "all our sins" is sung to notes of all different pitches (C D Eb), giving a sense of the breadth or entirety of that "all."

Here are the last two musical phrases:

In the third verse, the text here is "With the faithful sharing / Joy beyond comparing."  "Sharing" is sung with a melisma (Bb C Bb), and since it's spread across more notes than usual, there's something of a sense of its meaning.

I wrote about a couple small features in this hymn a few years ago, too.

"Once He Came in Blessing"

A couple years ago, I noticed two small features in "Once He Came in Blessing," sung to the tune "Gottes Sohn ist kommen."  Here are the third and fourth musical phrases:

In the first verse, the text here is "Came in likeness lowly, / Son of God most holy."  "Lowly" is sung to a descending group of notes (G F Eb), and to some degree, this illustrates that humility.  "Holy" is sung with a melisma (F Eb D C Bb), musically giving a sense of degree (for "most").

"Gottes Sohn ist kommen" (TLH #74)