Earlier this year, one of the hymns I sang in church was "Jesus Has Come and Brings Pleasure," sung to the tune "Jesus ist kommen, Grund ewiger Freude" (German: "Jesus has come, reason for eternal joy"). I noticed a few connections between the text and the tune.
Here's the first musical phrase:
In the first verse, the text here is "Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal." There are melismas for both "pleasure" (G Ab G) and "eternal" (F Eb Bb Bb), and since these words are stretched out, there's a musical sense of that "eternal" nature. This same text is the last line of the first verse, and while the melody is different, these words are again sung with melismas.
In the second verse, the text here is "Jesus has come! Now see bonds rent asunder!" In this verse, "rent" (Ab G) and "asunder" (F Eb Bb Bb) are sung with melismas. That these words are broken up into more syllables gives a musical sense of their meaning.
There's a similar feature in the third musical phrase (which is the same as the first musical phrase). In the second verse, "burst" in the line "See Him burst through with a voice as of thunder" is sung with a melisma (Eb F), and in the third verse, "breaks" in the line "Jesus breaks down all the walls of death's fortress" is sung with the same melisma. Again, because the words are broken up into more syllables, there's a musical sense of their meaning.
