"Eternal Father, Strong to Save"

Two years ago, I wrote about some features in "Eternal Father, Strong to Save."  I sang the hymn in church last week (it was included apparently to coincide with Veterans Day this week), and I noticed an-other small feature in it.

The fourth line of the fourth verse is "Protect them wheresoe'er they go," sung to this musical phrase from the tune "Melita":

The three syllables of "whereso'er" are each sung to a different pitch (E A G), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

"Eternal Father, Strong to Save"

A couple months ago, one of the hymns in the Worship for Shut-Ins Program for the Fifth Sunday of Easter was "Eternal Father, Strong to Save."  Between listening to it and then looking at the notation in my hymnal (where I found that the title of the tune to which it's sung is "Melita"), I found a couple things to write about.

The first two lines of the second verse are "O Christ, the Lord of hill and plain, / O'er which our traffic runs amain."  The melody to which the second line is sung has an arc, to musically describe that "traffic" travelling over the "hill," and then it levels out around G and F#, depicting the "plain":

To some degree, the breadth of this phrase also compasses the Holy Spirit's being "spread abroad the firmament" in the third verse.

The last two lines of the fourth verse are "Thus evermore shall rise to Thee / Glad praise from air and land and sea," and the melody for the first of these two lines ascends (as if to musically portray the "ris[ing]" of the "Glad praise"):

Furthermore, this phrase ascends chromatically (E to F to F# to G), which seems to make the ascent more obvious when the tune is heard.

"Melita"

Although I probably won't have a place in my scheduled posts for it until July, I have a post drafted about "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," the melody for which is "Melita."  Apparently, yester-day was Armed Forces Day, and since this hymn was apparently sung in the navy, I thought it'd be appropriate.

This tune isn't in Lutheran Worship, so this is just twice through the Lutheran Service Book arrangement (#717).  The tune is in Hymnal Supplement 98 (#906), but that arrangement is the same as that in LSB.