Unless stated otherwise, my source for hymn texts and tunes is The Lutheran Service Book.
Showing posts with label Lobt Gott den Herren ihr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lobt Gott den Herren ihr. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2019

"Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good"

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about something I noticed in "Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good" last year.  While looking over the hymn again since then, I found something else.

Every verse ends with the line "To God all praise and glory!" sung to this phrase from the tune "Lobt Gott den Herren, ihr":


Both "praise" and "glory" are sung with melismas (Bb A and F E F, respectively), musically giving a sense of the entirety of "all."

Friday, August 2, 2019

"Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good"

Last year, I noticed a small feature in "Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good," specifically in the line "With healing balm our souls He fills" in the first verse.  It's sung to this phrase from the tune "Lobt Gott den Herren, ihr":


"Fills" is sung to a dotted half note that takes up the entire measure.  Musically, then, there's a representation of that "fill[ing]."

In looking over the hymn again in order to write this post, I also discovered a merism in the second verse:  "By morning glow or evening shade / His eye is never sleeping."  A merism is a rhetorical device in which two ends of a range are named as a way to refer to the entirety, so here, while "morning" and "evening" are what are mentioned specifically, the idea includes all of the time between them too.