"Lift up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates" (LSB #341)

Many years ago, I wrote about a small feature in "Lift up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates."  A few years ago, I found many more things to note.  The text is paired with two different tunes, but this post is about "Milwaukee" (#341 in The Lutheran Service Book).

Here's the first musical phrase:

In the fifth verse, the text here is "Redeemer, come and open wide" (the sense is continued into the next line:  "My heart to Thee...").  "Come" is sung with a melisma (G F#), giving something of a sense of movement.

Here's the second musical phrase:

In the fifth verse, the text here is "My heart to Thee; here, Lord, abide!"  As noted above, this continues the sense from the previous line:  "open wide / My heart to Thee."  Since "heart" is sung with a melisma (D E), there's something of a sense of the expansion of "open[ing] wide."  In the second verse, the text here is "His chariot is humility."  As if to reflect this humility, there's a musical descent.

The third musical phrase:

In the first verse, the text here is "The King of kings is drawing near."  Since "drawing" is sung with a melisma (G E C#), there's a sense of movement.  There's a similar feature in the fifth verse, where the text here is "O enter with Thy grace divine" and "enter" is sung with a melisma (D G B).

The fifth musical phrase:

In the first verse, the text here is "Life and salvation He doth bring."  There are multiple overlapping cross inscriptions here, illustrating that it's through His crucifixion and resurrection that Jesus brings us "life and salvation."

The sixth musical phrase:

In the first verse, the text here is "Therefore rejoice and gladly sing."  "Rejoice" is sung with a melisma (A G F#), giving a sense of ebullience.  In the fourth verse, the text is "And new and nobler life begin."  "Nobler" is sung with a melisma (G F# E), giving something of a sense of the comparative nature of the adjective (more notes for a greater degree).

The eighth musical phrase:

In the first verse, the text is "Your joyful songs of praise" (it completes the sense from the previous line:  "To God the Father raise").  "Joyful" is sung with a melisma (E C A), giving a sense either of ebullience (as "rejoice" above) or of the abundance of being "-ful."  The same feature is also in the second verse, where the text is "Your grateful hymns of praise" and "grateful" is sung with the same melisma.

"Lift up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates"

A couple months ago, I watched the One LSB Hymn a Week video for "Lift up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates" (LSB #341):

It occurred to me that there's an ascending interval at the beginning of the first phrase, the melody to which "Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates" is sung:

The title of this tune is "Milwaukee," but in The Lutheran Service Book, "Lift up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates" is also paired with the tune "Macht hoch die Tür" (LSB #340).  The first phrase of that tune also begins with an ascending interval:

It's a smaller interval than that in "Milwaukee" (a minor third compared to a sixth), but it still provides the idea of the "lift[ing] up" in the hymn's text.